The North Carolina K-12 House Education Committee approved a bill on Tuesday that requires local boards of education to publish detailed employment and salary data for central office employees.
The new requirements under House Bill 56 would encompass details such as position, title, total compensation, and changes in employment status like promotions or dismissals. The total compensation requirement includes salary, reimbursements, and allowances. The information would be required to be published on the school district’s website.
The scope does not include teachers and instead focuses on superintendents, assistant or associate superintendents, directors, coordinators, finance officers, and other non-school-campus staff, including third-party contractors.
The bill only applies to traditional public schools, not public charters.
Supporters of the measure noted that the information is already available through Freedom of Information Act requests, but HB 56 makes the details more easily accessible.
“This is a taxpayer transparency bill,” said Rep. Erin Paré, R-Wake, the bill’s primary sponsor. “I think the taxpayers have a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being used, and it is pretty clear to me that they’re asking for that … on a publicly available platform.”
The measure drew criticism from some Democrats.
“I’m not in favor of this bill because I feel like it’s feeding into the narrative that our school staff is bloated or that they’re making too much money,” said Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake. “We’ve heard a lot of that at our federal level, and I think it’s trickling down at the state level. I also am opposed because I don’t know why we’re singling out central office staff. To me, it’s just adding into this narrative that our administration is bloated, that our school staff makes too much money.”
Rep. Cynthia Ball, D-Wake, also expressed concern over privacy for school personnel. “In a smaller district with less employees, I think it wouldn’t be hard for someone to figure out who that employee was, and therefore kind of exposes them in ways that perhaps is unfair to them in the more rural parts of the state,” Ball said.
“As far as privacy goes, I would just say number one, this information is meant to be public. But I did want to point out that no employees names are associated with their compensation information,” Paré replied.
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