Project Advance is a new payment method Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools will implement during the 2016-2017 school year.

The program would base teacher raises not on number of years in the district, but instead on professional development.

Orange County Commissioner Penny Rich said the commissioners have been receiving emails from teachers who don’t think the program is a good idea.

“These emails are disturbing to me,” she said. “You have veteran teachers that don’t feel comfortable with this program. They feel they were forced to go into the program because it was the only way they can get a raise.”

Rich said she received emails from 7 different teachers before beginning to communicate with teachers and representatives from the NC Association of Educators over the phone.

“One of the people who sent an email felt like there was retribution taken out on them,” she said. “They felt they could no longer send emails because someone was clocking the emails and they felt they were not in a safe place by sending emails anymore.”

Rich said she spoke with around 20 people over the phone after that.

Current CHCCS staff had the option of opting out of the project, but according to the Project Advance website, depending on years of service, a teacher’s supplements would stagnate and not reach the levels they could have under the previous system.

East Chapel Hill High School teacher Keith Gerdes said in an email to the commissioners that many of his colleagues chose to opt in “under duress.”

Superintendent Tom Forcella said nearly 1,000 people chose to opt in and that the district attracted new teachers because of Project Advance.

“We have done nothing to close the achievement gap, so if you keep doing what you always have done, you’ll keep getting the same thing,” he said. “And through intentional planning to reach all of the students, we will close the achievement gap.”

No teachers will receive a pay cut with the implementation of Project Advance, but those who opt in will go through a level of benchmarking that could cause them to show things such as lesson plans.

“Change is difficult,” Forcella said. “There are teachers that will tell me ‘I have 25 years of experience you mean you’re telling me I have to write a lesson plan?’ Well I’d say ‘yes, you do.'”

It is unclear what, if anything, the county commissioners can do if they have a problem with the direction of Project Advance.

Commissioners give funding to the schools and part of that funding goes towards paying the supplement provided to teachers.

Forcella said Project Advance would be cost-neutral to the district and the commissioners do not control how money is distributed.

That decision falls to the Board of Education, which has planned the project for nearly five years and multiple boards have unanimously approved it.

Project Advance is scheduled to be implemented during the next school year.

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