Are Orange County teachers who earned Career I or Career II status under the 1985 Career Development Pilot Program entitled to keep their enhanced pay after Orange County adopted a differentiated pay plan?
Plain-English summary
In 1985, the General Assembly launched a Career Development Pilot Program for North Carolina teachers. Sixteen school systems, Orange County among them, were selected. Teachers in the pilot systems could earn Career I or Career II status by meeting specific criteria, and once earned the status came with an enhanced salary schedule under G.S. 115C-363.11(b). G.S. 115C-363.11(c) added a key promise: if the pilot program was "discontinued," teachers who had already earned Career I or Career II status would not lose the salary increment they had earned. They would keep it, though they would forgo future state annual increments, cost-of-living increases, or other salary increments unless their base would otherwise drop below the regular base schedule.
The Orange County Board of Education's attorney asked the AG to address two practical questions. First, was the pilot program actually "discontinued" in Orange County? Second, if so, how broad was the hold-harmless protection?
The AG worked through three legislative acts to answer.
Discontinuation. The School Improvement and Accountability Act of 1989 (G.S. 115C-238.1 et seq.) created a permanent, optional differentiated-pay framework. Local school systems could choose to adopt a differentiated pay plan and could specifically select the Career Development Pilot Program model as the method. Orange County did exactly that, beginning with the 1990-91 school year. The AG read that choice as discontinuing the pilot program in Orange County and converting it into a permanent, though optional, differentiated-pay program. The conversion triggered the hold-harmless rule.
Who is covered. G.S. 115C-363.11(c) protected only teachers who had earned Career I or Career II status before the discontinuation. In Orange County, that meant teachers who had earned the status before the end of the 1989-90 school year. Teachers who reached Career I or Career II after the conversion earned that status under G.S. 115C-238.4's differentiated-pay authority, not under the pilot program, and they were not within the hold-harmless rule.
Scope of the protection. The hold-harmless was not a permanent enhanced-salary guarantee. It was limited to the difference (if any) between the 1989-90 enhanced salary and what the teacher earned in subsequent years. The General Assembly had been raising base salaries across the board, so for many teachers there was no actual gap to fill. The AG was matter-of-fact about that arithmetic: in practice the protection often did no work.
The 1992 Appropriations Act question. The General Assembly added a provision in the 1992 Current Appropriations Act (1991 Sess. Laws ch. 900, § 71(e)) that arguably guaranteed teachers in former career pilot units would not receive less in salary and state-funded bonuses in 1993-94 than they had in 1992-93. The AG read that language as ambiguous: it could be a new and independent guarantee, or it could be a legislative declaration that the appropriated funds were sufficient to honor the existing G.S. 115C-363.11(c) protection. The AG concluded the latter reading was more plausible. The statutory language was "with regard to the amount of State funds appropriated," not a freestanding new salary commitment. So the 1992 appropriations language did not expand the hold-harmless protection.
Currency note
This opinion was issued in 1994. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here.
North Carolina's teacher compensation framework has been substantially restructured since 1994. The Career Development Pilot Program statutes have been amended or repealed, the School Improvement and Accountability Act has matured, and the state teacher salary schedule has been overhauled multiple times. Any current question about teacher hold-harmless rights should be checked against the current statutes and the current Department of Public Instruction guidance.
Common questions
Q: Did the pilot program ever formally end statewide?
A: The AG identified four events that could discontinue the program in a given system: (1) the system withdrawing; (2) the General Assembly converting it to a permanent program; (3) the General Assembly allowing systems to convert and the system doing so; or (4) the General Assembly repealing the pilot. Orange County's adoption of a differentiated pay plan under the 1989 Act constituted discontinuation in Orange County.
Q: What about teachers who earned Career status after 1989-90 in Orange County?
A: They were not protected by G.S. 115C-363.11(c). They earned their status under the post-1989 differentiated pay authority of G.S. 115C-238.4, which had its own (different) rules and no statutory hold-harmless.
Q: Was the hold-harmless a permanent salary floor?
A: No. The AG was clear that it was limited to the difference between the 1989-90 enhanced salary and the teacher's subsequent salary. Once across-the-board raises pushed the regular salary up to or past the 1989-90 number, the hold-harmless paid nothing additional.
Q: Did the 1992 Appropriations Act create a new hold-harmless?
A: The AG read it as ambiguous and resolved the ambiguity against creating a new guarantee. The language was framed in terms of appropriation sufficiency, not new substantive teacher rights.
Background and statutory framework
The opinion required reading three legislative layers together:
- The Career Development Pilot Program (G.S. 115C-363 et seq., 1985). Created the pilot program. G.S. 115C-363.11(b) provided the enhanced salary schedule for Career I and Career II teachers. G.S. 115C-363.11(c) added the hold-harmless on discontinuation.
- The School Improvement and Accountability Act of 1989 (1989 Sess. Laws ch. 778, codified at G.S. 115C-238.1 et seq.). Created a permanent, optional school-improvement framework. G.S. 115C-238.4 authorized but did not require differentiated pay plans, with the Career Development Pilot Program model as one option.
- The 1992 Current Appropriations Act (1991 Sess. Laws ch. 900, § 71(e)). Added the ambiguous language about teacher salaries in former pilot units for the 1993-94 fiscal year.
Two interpretive moves carried the analysis:
- Discontinuation by conversion. The AG read Orange County's adoption of a differentiated pay plan in 1990-91 as a discontinuation event because it shifted teachers in Orange County out of the pilot framework and into the new G.S. 115C-238.4 authority. The pilot, as a pilot, no longer operated in Orange County.
- Narrow construction of the hold-harmless trigger. The AG anchored the protected class strictly to teachers who had earned Career I or Career II status before discontinuation, and limited the protection to the 1989-90 salary differential. Forward-looking enhancements went to the differentiated pay plan, not to the hold-harmless rule.
The reading on the 1992 Appropriations Act applied a common interpretive presumption: appropriations bills generally do not create substantive entitlements absent clear language. The phrase "with regard to the amount of State funds appropriated" oriented the General Assembly's statement toward funding sufficiency, not toward a new salary right.
Citations
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-238.1 et seq. (School Improvement and Accountability Act)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-238.2 (benefits to systems adopting school improvement plans)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-238.3 (school improvement plan authority)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-238.4 (differentiated pay plan authority)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-363 et seq. (Career Development Pilot Program)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-363.11(b) (enhanced salary schedule for Career I/II teachers)
- N.C.G.S. § 115C-363.11(c) (hold-harmless on discontinuation)
- 1989 Sess. Laws ch. 778 (School Improvement and Accountability Act)
- 1991 Sess. Laws ch. 900, § 71(e) (1992) (Current Appropriations Act language)
- 1993 Sess. Laws chs. 263 and 321 (related amendments)
Source
Original opinion text
January 21, 1994
D. Michael Parker
Cheshire & Parker
100 N. Churton Street
P.O. Box 100
Hillsborough, N.C. 27278
Re: Advisory Opinion; Public Schools; Teachers; Career Development Pilot Program; G.S. 115C-238.1 et seq.; G.S. 115C-363.1 et seq.; 1991 Sess. Laws ch. 900 (1992); 1993 Sess. Laws chs. 263 and 321.
Dear Mr. Parker:
The Orange County School System was one of the 16 public school systems selected to participate in the Career Development Pilot Program established by the General Assembly in 1985. G.S. 115C-363 et seq. Many of the teachers in the Orange County System attained Career I or Career II status under that Pilot Program and received the enhanced salaries provided for by G.S. 115C-363.11(b). Questions have been raised by some of these teachers regarding their right to be "held harmless" with regard to the enhanced pay they received for earning Career I or Career II status under the Career Development Pilot Program. As attorney for the Orange County Board of Education you have asked for our opinion.
This is a complex question requiring an analysis of several acts of the General Assembly. First among these acts is G.S. 115C-363.11(c). It provides:
If the pilot programs established pursuant to the provisions of G.S. 115C-363 are discontinued, any employee who has received a salary increment pursuant to the Career Development Plan shall continue to be paid the salary increment; however, the employee shall not receive any additional state annual increment, cost of living increment, or other salary increment unless the employee's salary would otherwise be less than the salary applicable to him on the base salary schedule. (emphasis added)
The obvious intent of the General Assembly in enacting this section was to provide an incentive to teachers to participate in this pilot program by assuring them that discontinuation of the pilot program would not result in the loss of the enhanced pay they had earned by achieving Career I or Career II status. Consistent with this intent, discontinuation of the Career Development Program as a pilot program is the event that triggers the rights of teachers who have earned Career I or Career II status to be held harmless. At the time the Pilot Program was enacted there were several events which would have resulted in the Program's discontinuation in some or all of the participating school systems. These include: (1) a decision by a participating system to withdraw from the Pilot Program; (2) a decision by the General Assembly to convert the Pilot Program to a permanent program; (3) a decision by the General Assembly to allow participating school systems to convert from the Pilot Program to a permanent program and a subsequent decision by a participating system to make that conversion; and (4) a decision by the General Assembly to repeal the Pilot Program.
On August 12, 1989, the General Assembly enacted the "School Improvement and Accountability Act of 1989". 1989 Sess. Laws ch. 778, codified as G.S. 115C-238.1 et seq. That Act established a permanent, though optional, program. It authorized, but did not require, local school systems to develop school improvement plans, G.S. 115C-238.3, and provided for certain benefits for school systems deciding to develop such plans. See G.S. 115C-238.2. Significantly, that Act also authorized, but did not require, local school systems to establish a differentiated pay plan for teachers, including a differentiated pay plan based on "The Career Development Pilot Program, G.S. 115C-363 et seq.". G.S. 115C-238-4. We understand that the Orange County School System elected to adopt a differentiated pay plan beginning with the 1990-91 school year and subsequent years, and that it selected the Career Development Pilot Program as the method for providing differentiated pay for teachers. In our opinion, that decision had the effect of discontinuing the Career Development Pilot Program in Orange County, as a pilot program, and of converting it into a permanent, though optional, program. That decision in turn had the effect of triggering the "hold harmless" provision of G.S. 115C-363.11(c) in Orange County. Thus, the scope of the "hold harmless" provision must be examined.
This "hold harmless" provision is not open-ended. By the plain words of G.S. 115C-363.11(c), the only teachers entitled to its benefit are those who had earned Career I or Career II status prior to the time the Pilot Program was "discontinued" as a pilot program in Orange County. Teachers who subsequently earned Career I or Career II status did not earn that status under the Career Development Pilot Program; they earned it under the differentiated pay provision of G.S. 115C-238.4. Thus, the only teachers in Orange County entitled to the benefit of G.S. 115C-363.11(c) are those who had earned Career I or II status before the end of the 1989-90 school year. Moreover, the "hold harmless" provision in G.S. 115C-363.11(c) does not provide these teachers with the benefit of their enhanced salaries in perpetuity. It is limited to the difference, if any, between the 1989-90 salary earned by a Career I or Career II teacher in Orange County under the enhanced salary schedule established by G.S. 115C-363.11(b) and the salary earned by those teachers for subsequent school years. Presumably, the salaries of these teachers were as high as or higher in subsequent years than their 1989-90 salaries as a consequence of across-the-board salary increases provided by the General Assembly.
Another possible "hold harmless" provision appears in the 1992 Current Appropriations Act and apparently applies to the 1993-94 fiscal year. It provides:
With regard to the amount of State funds appropriated in subsequent fiscal years for local school administrative units that were career development pilot units, it is the intent of the General Assembly that any reductions in appropriations not result in teachers receiving less in salary and State-funded bonuses, than they received on a monthly basis during the prior fiscal year so long as the teachers qualify for bonuses under the local differential pay plan.
1991 Sess. Laws ch. 900, § 71(e)(1992).
This section is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can be read as a new or independent guarantee that teachers in former career pilot units not receive a lower total salary in the 1993-94 fiscal year than they received in the 1992-93 fiscal year so long as they meet the requirements for a bonus under the differentiated pay plan in effect for the 1993-94 fiscal year. On the other hand, it can be read as simply a legislative declaration that the General Assembly believed that the level of State appropriations was sufficient to carry out the "hold harmless" provisions of G.S. 115C-363.11(c) in the former career development pilot systems for the 1993-94 fiscal year. The latter interpretation, in our opinion, is the most plausible. The intent of the legislature is "with regard to the amount of State funds appropriated". No intent is directly stated with respect to any salary guarantee independent of G.S. 115C-363.11(c). Thus, we do not read this section as a new or independent "hold harmless" provision. Instead, it should be read simply as a legislative declaration that the funds it was appropriating were sufficient to carry out G.S. 115C-363.11(c) for the 1993-94 fiscal year.
Edwin M. Speas, Jr.
Senior Deputy Attorney General
Thomas J. Ziko
Special Deputy Attorney General