Beaufort County teaching assistants have been left guessing, as the North Carolina General Assembly has yet to hash out a budget for this fiscal year—a budget on which teaching assistants’ jobs are hinging.

A group of about 20 educators from several eastern North Carolina counties, including Beaufort, Hyde, Currituck and Washington, met with state Rep. Paul Tine on Monday afternoon in Plymouth to discuss the fate of assistants.

The meeting, which was organized by a group from Chocowinity Primary School, including teaching assistant Vickie Wilkinson, who will not be able to return to work in the fall due to funding, was held to create an open dialogue with Tine about the struggles educators are facing.

Tine said he is opposed to the Senate budget, which cuts funding for teaching assistants in half, and that the House budget, which maintains the same funding as last year, is more educator-friendly.

“There are some really big, broad changes that the Senate has proposed,” Tine said. “There’s a whole bunch in that budget that’s a big ol’ disaster.”

With the Senate’s budget proposal, many teaching assistants, especially newer ones, would be removed from classrooms, but supporters of the proposal say the money from those cuts could be used to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes.  The legislature went back into session last night and must decide on the teaching assistant issue by Aug. 14.

“It’s going to be a very long process this time,” Tine said. “Until you figure out the big policy issues, you can’t do the hard work.”

In the meantime, teaching assistants are left in limbo.

Cameron Hill, a fourth grade teacher at Chocowinity Primary School who attended the meeting with Tine, said she does not personally have a teaching assistant for her classroom, but she has seen how vital they can be.

“Contrary to popular belief, teacher assistants do not act as babysitters in the public school setting,” Hill said. “No, teacher assistants act as partners in the elementary school setting. They are partners with their cooperating teachers, partners with the office staff, partners with the cafeteria staff and partners with the support staff of the school. They are not subservient to anyone nor less important than any other member of the school community.”

She said she was able to watch the interactions between a teacher, assistant and students first-hand when her fourth grade class partnered with one of the kindergarten classes this past school year.

“I know that there are assistants who are sub-par. However, that is the exception and not the rule,” Hill said.

Ann Collier, a teaching assistant at Chocowinity Primary, said assistants help to provide children with the strong foundation they need in the classroom, and she said she doesn’t understand why legislators would take that foundation away.

She said state educators are not in the profession for the money but rather for the kids and being able to help a child understand a concept.

“It’s the children who (are) really going to suffer,” Collier said.

Rep. Tine said the best thing to do is to reach out to the legislators who are supporting the cuts in funding and work to convince them of the importance of the position. He said educators should also reach out to businesses in their communities because education builds the workforce and leads to good employees.

“We’ve got to take our time to make sure we don’t get forced into bad decisions,” Tine said. “It’s going to create difficulties in personal lives, and I’m sorry.”

The same group was also able to organize a meeting with state Sen. Bill Cook on Aug. 20, but the decision will have already been made almost a week prior.