After 28 years of legal wrangling, North Carolina’s lawmakers continue to fail children by not adequately funding public schools, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the long-running Leandro school funding case told the State Supreme Court on Wednesday.
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Education
Low salaries for public school teachers continue to hurt recruitment North Carolina should return to paying teachers who hold advanced degrees extra, in order to help school districts struggling to fill classrooms with certified teachers, a subcommittee of the state Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission (PEPSC) agreed Wednesday.
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Superintendent Catherine Truitt denies plan would introduce "merit pay," but critics strongly disagree With just a few weeks left before the start of a new school year, districts are scrambling to fill teaching vacancies. North Carolina educators, and those in other states, are leaving the profession in large numbers on the heels of a traumatic COVID-19 pandemic that at its worst led to school closures, remote learning, and unprecedented stress and burnout for teachers.
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The UNC Board of Governors approved a bonus of $451,200 for UNC System President Peter Hans Wednesday, which board members said reflects the “exceptional job” Hans continues to do for the UNC System. The one-time payment to Hans’s Senior Administrative Officer Retirement Account is in line with an incentive scheme under which he was hired in June of 2020.
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GOP sponsors push for an elected state school board, but Democrats warn against further politicizing public education A bill that would require State Board of Education members to be elected is a “horrible idea” that could exacerbate the state’s growing partisan divide over public schools, says June Atkinson, a former state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Atkinson’s remarks are in response to questions about House Bill 1173, Republican-backed legislation that would put the question of whether to elect state board members before voters as part of a referendum.
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After six years on the UNC Board of Governors, Leo Daughtry is being moved to the North Carolina State Board of Transportation. It wasn’t a move he requested, Daughtry told Policy Watch last week. But the change, part of a political appointments bill passed at the end of the legislative session, was probably inevitable after Daughtry said aloud something a number of board members privately say they also believe: the plan to move the UNC System offices to downtown Raleigh is expensive, ill-considered and motivated primarily by politics.
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Big hike would come at same time traditional public schools are grappling with funding challenges and staffing shortfalls State lawmakers may regret the decision to stuff millions of additional dollars into the state’s underutilized school voucher program, Rep. Rachel Hunt warned last week. The Mecklenburg County Democrat said the feeling of remorse will likely come over them in August...
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Some conservative students say they feel stifled, but generally not by faculty members When Policy Watch reported on conservative writer and podcaster Ben Shapiro’s visit to UNCG in April, it had all the hallmarks of the current debate over free speech on campuses. A highly partisan figure drawing huge crowds with divisive -- in this case, transphobic and homophobic -- language. Students protesting, holding a competing event and verbally sparring with the speaker.
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Trauma, depression, and suicide have spiked and a bill in the General Assembly could make things worse The pandemic has been unkind to America’s school children. Academically, K-12 students experienced significant learning loss while stuck at home during the height of the pandemic. The long-term impact of students falling behind in school keeps educators awake at night.
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This month the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics released a new edition of Contemporary Precalculus Through Applications, the popular book that is the only text in the school’s precalculus courses. But this new edition is available digitally, for free, to not just students at the elite residential high school but high school and college students all over the state.
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This week House Bill 755 - the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” - is headed for one more procedural vote in the N.C. House and then to the desk of Gov. Roy Cooper. Cooper, a Democrat, has signaled he will veto the bill. But democratic lawmakers say tha will serve Republicans’ political purposes, letting them campaign on their opposition having killed a bill that would ban any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in Kindergarten through third grade.
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