Save Our NC Community Colleges

A crisis looms for North Carolina's community colleges for, after 40 years of excellence in education and in workforce development, these institutions remain perpetually under-funded. Our community colleges have been hailed as a model for the nation; in fact, when Kentucky revamped its system in the late 1990's, a delegation visited North Carolina to study our system. And, when Thailand wanted to establish community colleges, theirs were modeled after ours.

Now this tradition of excellence is threatened:

	Local governments charged with maintaining the facilities and staffing maintenance and custodial positions have been hit hard by the state and nation's economic situation and are unable to increase funding to even keep up with school growth.
	The state under funds community colleges, providing hundreds of million dollars less than the university system and billions of dollars less than the public schools, even though thousands more students are served at community colleges.
	Faculty are retiring and replacements are difficult to find at the current salary levels.

To better our position -- in the nation where we are ranked 47th in faculty salaries -- we must urge the General Assembly to bring North Carolina's community college faculty salaries to the national average.

This is the stance which the North Carolina Community College Faculty Association Executive Board supports. Electronic signatures from students, faculty, staff and friends in support of raising faculty salaries to the national average are now being collected.

Please support this resolution: That the legislature implement a five-year plan to raise community college faculty salaries to the national average with appropriated raises divided equally beginning in the 2003-2004 budget year.