Seeing Early College students walk through campus on their way to class is not an unusual or noteworthy sight at Guilford. And soon it will be just as accepted at UNCG.

The Guilford County Board of Education recently approved the creation of a middle college program geared towards high school students who are both struggling in traditional high schools and are interested in health-related fields. This program, in addition to helping the students succeed and hopefully lowering high school dropout rates, will also help solidify the recently restructured health sciences program at UNCG.

The creation of this new middle college program may not seem newsworthy by itself. But when you know that, according to Teacherportal.com, North Carolina ranks in the bottom 50 percent of the country for average teacher salaries, the creation of an expensive new program seems less favorable.

And when you know that, according to the News and Record, the salary for the principal of this program — which will open with about 50 students — is going to be $99,000, the creation of this expensive new program seems almost unreasonable. And that doesn’t even include the salaries for the three full-time teachers that the program will open with.

Improving education should always be a goal because the children in school today will become the people making all the decisions tomorrow. But this new program won’t be a serious improvement when every other higher education institute in the city already has early or middle college programs.

“I don’t think we’ve spent the time molding and shaping and tweaking the existing middle colleges we have,” Deena Hayes, a Board of Education member, said to the News and Record.

With that in mind, this new middle college program will simply be another weight on an overly strained school district. And this new weight will be a costly one.

The program will be funded in part by private funds, but will also draw on federal dropout prevention funds and money from the state budget, according to the News and Record.

“During tough budget times, it’s even more important to use proven ideas to expand educational opportunities for our students,” said Maurice Green, Guilford County Schools superintendent.

Green refers to Guilford County’s middle and early college programs as “proven” because the school district is supposedly a national leader for offering its high volume of innovative high school programs, according to Beth Folger, Guilford County schools’ chief academic officer.

If that is in fact the case and the beyond basic high school programs that Guilford County schools offer are some of the best nationally, than shouldn’t our teacher pay be some of the best nationally? The people that are the backbone of those seemingly exceptional programs, the people who teach these children and inspire them to stay in school, should also reap the benefits of the innovation.