Durham Public School teachers are leaving their careers. Why?

Teachers play a crucial role in the lives of children. Oftentimes, students spend more time at school than they do at home.

Perhaps you may recall accidentally calling one of your teachers “mom” or “dad” during grade school.

North Carolina’s teachers often spend hours in and out of the classroom preparing lesson plans and grading assignments. Less than 55% of teachers agree that their non-instructional time is sufficient, according to the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey.

Despite their hours of work, many teachers in North Carolina have expressed that they feel undervalued and undercompensated.

In 2023, 1,738 teachers left the teaching field in North Carolina, according to data from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

For teachers like Davis Harper, teaching was no longer financially feasible.

“What the job was taking from me in terms of the time that was required, it became not worth it for me,” said Harper, who left Durham Public Schools in 2024 after working at the Durham School of Technology for seven years.

With a growing family, he said that his salary would not have been enough to be sustainable.

“Your quality of life is either static or it decreases because the salary is the same, but you, as people do, keep evolving as a person,” Harper said. “And life gets more expensive and more time consuming.”

According to the National Education Association, North Carolina ranked 42^nd in teacher compensation, with an average yearly salary of $56,559.

Durham Public Schools reported that their yearly salaries range from $43,450-$82,025 on their website.

Harper is now pursuing his doctorate in teacher education and learning science at N.C. State University. He said that he does not plan to go back to K-12 education.

Though a self-proclaimed “zealot for public schools,” Harper said that “it’s hard to love a profession that doesn’t love you back.”

Millie Rosen, a middle school math teacher at the Durham School of the Arts, said that students’ needs can’t be met because of unrealistic expectations for teachers.

Rosen, who has taught in DPS for 11 years, said that there are far less adults in schools now than when she was in high school. This means more work for fewer teachers.

She said that her largest class has 33 students.

“That’s insane,” she said.

Mika Twietmeyer, the Durham Association of Educators President, also recalled that when she began her teaching career at Riverside High School, there were more teachers than classrooms.

Now, students and parents alike are feeling the effects of teacher attrition.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction defines attrition as “separation of employment from a school district with no subsequent employment in any North Carolina public-school unit.”

Girija Mahajan, a parent of two children in DPS, criticized the DPS Board of Education and shared her experience dealing with teacher attrition in an editorial in the INDY WEEK last August.

From the third to the fifth grade, her daughter had a permanent substitute.

Fortunately, the substitute was a former certified teacher from her child’s school who had transitioned to an instructional assistant role.

“It was probably the best of challenging situations,” Mahajan said.

Her daughter also started kindergarten in fall 2019, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making her educational journey “a very challenging experience.”

When she attended her daughter’s fourth grade open house in 2023, she entered the classroom to find the lights off and the room empty.

“It was sad because this was the second year that my daughter experienced entering into a classroom where the permanent teacher position was in flux,” Mahajan said.

In North Carolina, teachers with less than one year of experience have the highest rate of attrition.

“As [teachers in their beginning years] transition or begin to get into their first two or three years, they’re like ‘yeah maybe this is not for me,’” said Millicent Rogers, chair of DPS Board of Education. “And that would happen in any county.”

A portion of the teacher attrition rate can also be attributed to the rate at which Millennials and Gen Z change careers, and leave before getting proper licensing, according to Rogers.

DAE President Twietmeyer continues to advocate for the improvements of conditions for teachers with the Durham Association of Educators.

Despite DAE’s strong membership, members have a difficult time communicating with the DPS Board of Education because North Carolina is one of three states that does not allow collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining is “the negotiation process between an employer and a union comprised of workers to create an agreement that will govern the terms and conditions of the workers’ employment,” according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

However, through the hardships of teaching in North Carolina, many teachers aren’t budging.

Raychelle Baptist, a math teacher at Hillside High School, said that she has seen teachers come and go. One of her colleagues left teaching a few years ago to work at Amazon to make more money.

But after twenty-five years of teaching, Baptist said that she’s committed to not only the success of her students, but also being a positive representation as a Black female teacher in science.

“What I’m doing is greater than myself,” Baptist said, “and if I don’t stay behind to help the students, who will?”