JACKSONVILLE (February 5, 2025) – Our latest installment of Teachers Talk features Erin Walsh, a math teacher at Onslow Early College High School.

Walsh explains how she retired from teaching after 29 years and returned as a part-time teacher to make more money. (She is a math teacher, after all!)

“Sadly, our pay stops increasing dramatically after year 15 in North Carolina,” she says “That is the reason a lot of teachers leave the profession and do not stick around for the retirement plan.”

She discusses how she once saw healthy raises and incentives for teachers, but those incentives started ebbing away in 2009.

“If North Carolina wants to keep recruiting the best and the brightest, the pay scale must change,” Walsh says. “It is now frozen from year 15 to year 25, meaning your experience, your knowledge, your presence isn’t really valued, in my opinion.”

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Disclosure: We’re proud that Erin Walsh’s daughter, Molly, is the Online Community Manager
for the Public Ed Works team.

Are you a teacher willing to share your story? Visit our Teachers Talk page and submit a video before February 21, 2025 to have your name entered into a drawing for two UNC vs. Duke basketball tickets!