A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to appropriate funds to ensure that low‑wealth schools have the resources to retain excellent teachers.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.(a)  There is appropriated from the General Fund to the Department of Public Instruction the sum of thirty million dollars ($30,000,000) for the 2005‑2006 fiscal year and the sum of thirty million dollars ($30,000,000) for the 2006‑2007 fiscal year to ensure that local school administrative units in low‑wealth counties have the resources to retain excellent teachers.  The State Board of Education shall allocate these funds to local school administrative units located in counties for which the county wealth is eighty percent or less of the State average wealth, as computed under the funding formula for low‑wealth county supplemental funding.
Allocations shall be adjusted for local effort in accordance with the funding formula for low‑wealth county supplemental funding.
SECTION 1.(b)  The State Board of Education shall allocate funds to each such local school administrative unit to increase the unit's average local teacher salary supplement from the percentage of salary paid by the unit for the 2004‑2005 school year to the average percentage of salary paid by the large urban metropolitan units in the State for the 2004‑2005 school year. A local school administrative unit shall receive these funds only after fifty percent of any low‑wealth county supplemental funding and disadvantaged student supplemental funding received by the unit has been spent for this purpose.
The large urban metropolitan units in the State are the Durham County, Wake County, Orange County, Chapel Hill‑Carrboro City, Charlotte‑Mecklenburg County, Buncombe County, Asheville City, New Hanover County, Winston‑Salem/Forsyth County, and Guilford County School Administrative Units.
Local school administrative units shall use these funds only for salary supplements to retain teachers.
SECTION 2.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2005.