From the public record: Current ABSS salaries PART 1 (A-Cr)
The average salary for Alamance-Burlington teachers on 10-month contracts is about $58,000, based on a review of all salaries, as of earlier this year.
For teachers on 11-month contracts, the average salary is approximately $69,727; and for teachers on 12-month contracts, the average is about $76,871.
By comparison, the starting pay for North Carolina K-12 teachers with no experience remains at $41,000, the level set for the previous 2024-25 fiscal year, according to state education officials.
The salary information is based on materials provided to the newspaper earlier this year, based on a request for salaries as of February 1, 2025.
The December 18 edition of The Alamance News covered the salaries for the 44 highest-paid ABSS employees. [See story here: https://alamancenews.com/44-abss-employees-make-over-100k-including-27-school-principals/]
Printed here is a portion of the more than 3,870 people employed with ABSS in some capacity, including all teachers and other full-time staff, as well as part-time and temporary employees such as exam proctors and substitute teachers.
As it had for other local governments in the county, the newspaper asked the school system for the following information for all ABSS employees, all of which is to be publicly available by statute:
- Full name;
- Date of hire;
- Current job title/assigned station;
- Current annual salary, as of February 1, 2025;
- Total salary compensation for those same employees during the 2024 calendar year, including base annual or hourly pay, plus any amounts paid for additional duties, bonuses, overtime, longevity pay, employer-matching contributions for healthcare and/or dental coverage for the employee and dependents, as well as employer-matching retirement contributions.
School officials have previously said that those benefits account for about 20 percent of full-time employees’ salaries.
The salary information furnished by ABSS lacked a breakdown of the value of employee benefits such as employer-matching health insurance and retirement contributions. It did include separate lines listing the amount of county-funded supplement each eligible employee received as well as state-funded compensation for longevity – but lacked the total amount of compensation for each person.
ABSS officials told The Alamance News that they could not provide the requested total compensation or value of benefits because they do not maintain the information in that format.
As such, each employ-ee’s name is listed only once and all single lines are calculated into a single “yearly” value. Listings for most employees who are paid on an hourly basis contain a notation in the job description/classification.
The records furnished by ABSS also lacked the requested locations to which each employee was assigned when the public records request was submitted earlier this year.
ABSS instead furnished a partial list of site codes used at the state level for school business reporting and other data collection purposes.
Compensation structured according to job classification/position
ABSS principals, assistant principals, teachers, specialists (e.g., occupational therapists) and administrators (such as program directors and assistant superintendents) are paid on a state salary scheduled based on years of experience and level of education, according to the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI).
Most “certified” school employees – principals, assistant principals, teachers, and other staff whose positions require a state educator’s license as a prerequisite for employment – are also paid an annual county-funded supplement. The county supplement is calculated as a percentage of their state-funded salaries and is based on consecutive years of employment with ABSS, according to the school system’s human resources department.
Teachers who earn National Board Certification are also paid a state-funded annual salary that is about 12 percent higher than teachers who aren’t certified, based on information from DPI.
Teachers also receive incremental increases in their base salary (i.e., “steps” or step increases) based on additional years of experience.
Approximately 1,421 certified employees fall into the certified 10-month category, with the majority being teachers employed on 10-month contracts, based on the newspaper’s analysis of the salary information provided by ABSS.
Including the county-funded supplement, the median pay for 10-month teachers in ABSS averages $58,842, based on the newspaper’s analysis of the salaries provided by ABSS.
By comparison, the starting pay for North Carolina K-12 teachers with no experience remains at $41,000, the level set for the previous 2024-25 fiscal year, according to state education officials.
The pay for teachers on 11-month contracts averages approximately $69,727; and that for teachers on 12-month contracts averages about $76,871, the analysis reveals. (Employment contracts for eligible teachers are customarily presented to the school board to be considered for renewal in May, June, and August of each year.)
Classified pay
Compensation is structured in several ways for noncertified (“classified”) employees, or those whose positions don’t require a state educator’s license as a condition of employment: full-time office personnel, skilled trades worker (carpenters, plumbers, electricians), cafeteria managers, and other full-time classified employees are paid on state salary ranges published by the State Board of Education (SBE).
Additionally, a state law that took effect in July 2022 also requires that all full-time classified school employees receive a minimum wage of at least $15 per hour and/or the equivalent of $15 per hour for salaried positions.
Part-time classified employees are paid on an hourly basis, which is outlined in the school system’s own pay schedules, according to the ABSS human resources department. These hourly pay schedules also contain dozens of “grades” and “steps,” based on job duties and experience, as well as what state education officials have established as allowable minimum and maximum pay rates.
The salaries listed nearby do not reflect the new county-funded supplement that ABSS began offering most of its classified employees, starting with the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Substitute pay
Finally, substitute teachers are paid on a daily rate that is established by the SBE.
For the 2024-25 fiscal year, the daily rate for certified substitutes (those with a state teaching license), the daily pay rate ranged between a minimum of $121/day and a maximum of $186/day, according to salary schedules that the state board published in July 2024.
The daily pay rate for non-certified substitutes (those without a state teaching license) ranged between a minimum of $93/day and a maximum of $186/day, according to the SBE.
Any substitute whose pay is state-funded must also receive the state minimum wage of at least $15 per hour, according to the SBE’s state salary schedules, which notes, “it is the responsibility of each district to verify that they are in compliance with this legislation.”
Other compensation
The salary data furnished by ABSS also includes the $300 monthly stipends, for an annual total of $3,600, paid to six of the seven school board members, which at the time included Chuck Marsh, who resigned from the board in February 2025. [School board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves previously confirmed for The Alamance News that she has declined to accept any stipend payments during any portion of her two terms on the school board.]
[The list of salaries, in alphabetical order, from A through Cr, is available HERE.]
From the publisher: details on how salary material was assembled
Salaries for all ABSS employees are being run as a part of the news-paper’s ongoing efforts to provide detailed financial information about local government agencies. The newspaper published salaries for county government and the five largest local municipalities earlier this year.
The information for the school system was provided by the school system in a manner that made it very difficult to condense and summarize.
The school system did not provide the total compensation received during the previous year (2024), as had been requested as a part of the news-paper’s public records request.
Rather the school system provided current salaries at the time by line item, or type of pay, for each employee. In other words, regular salary, the local county-paid supplement, coaching supplement (if any), bus driver pay (if any), or any other special pay for individual employees was listed separately, making it difficult to tabulate the “total” salary.
After several efforts during the year, the newspaper was able to find a computer program into which the line item data could be submitted and tabulated.
This published list is based on that computer program’s cal-culations, given the separate line items (often ranging from two to six sources of income) provided by the school system.
Inasmuch as the underlying state salaries which provide the basis for most ABSS employees’ salaries have not been changed by the General Assembly during 2025 – due to an impasse between the state house and state senate on approving a state budget – most of the salaries should still be accurate.
It is possible that the computer program used by the newspaper may not have calculated everything properly because of coding differences or other technical issues, but the newspaper is confident enough to provide the following information. A spot check of several dozen salaries showed them to have been tabulated accurately..
One further complication, however, is unspecified “salary adjustments” – most likely raises – that have been recommended by the school administration and subsequently approved by the school board between July and December.
A public records request filed by the newspaper with school superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming earlier this month requests the specifics on those adjustments, which were provided to more than 300 ABSS employees during the past six months.
However, that public records request has not yet been fulfilled. When it is, the newspaper will run the updated information for the employees whose salaries were changed.
Additionally a new county-funded supplement for classified employees is not reflected in those employees’ salaries from February.
