VISUALIZED AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS · NC
North Carolina Public Schools
The canvas comes first: every public school district in North Carolina, drawn from the federal boundary files. The data layers — enrollment change, funding, teachers, achievement — are built on top of this map, Missouri-style, in phases.
THE DISTRICT MAP
School district boundaries
Hover any district for its name. Boundaries are the 2024–25 school-year files from NCES EDGE / U.S. Census TIGER.
MAP IN PREPARATION
The North Carolina district boundary file hasn’t been generated yet.
Run scripts/make_boundaries.sh to rebuild boundaries/north-carolina.geojson, then redeploy.
Source: NCES EDGE Composite School District Boundaries, 2024–25 (via U.S. Census TIGER/Line). Unified school districts.
118 districts are drawn on this map.
A note about charter schools. Charter schools enroll about 10% of North Carolina’s public-school students, and they are not represented on this map. In North Carolina most charters are authorized by the state Charter Schools Review Board rather than by school districts: they operate outside the district system, are usually their own local education agency, and often enroll students across district lines. So this map describes North Carolina’s geographic district system — not its whole public-school population. That distinction matters here more than in most states, and it will matter for every data layer built on top of this map.
TEACHER PAY
What North Carolina pays its teachers
A first look, from the National Education Association’s 2024–25 salary benchmarks. These are North Carolina statewide averages of district salary schedules; a district-by-district map is the next layer (see the note below).
$44,952
Average starting teacher salary — bachelor’s degree, no experience.
NEA 2024–25 Benchmark Report
$70,257
Average top-of-schedule salary — the highest step and lane a teacher can reach.
NEA 2024–25 Benchmark Report
115
of North Carolina’s 125 school districts had salary data reported (92.0%).
NEA 2024–25 Benchmark Report
Source: National Education Association, 2024–2025 Teacher Salary Benchmark Report (April 2026), state tables ST-1 and ST-4. Figures are unweighted averages of district salary schedules; “starting” = bachelor’s degree with no experience, “top of schedule” = the highest step and lane. For reference, the national average starting salary was $48,112.
The district map is the next layer. A district-by-district salary map for North Carolina is being built from federal finance data — NCES teacher counts and the U.S. Census F-33 school-finance survey — to show an
average salary per district (a derived measure, and labeled as one). Until it lands, this page carries the verified statewide figures above. For the fully built version of this theme, see the Missouri flagship’s
Teacher Pay page.