public schools

Tuesday morning was warm and muggy. Eyeglasses above tightly fitted masks fogged over with each breath.  At Bethesda Elementary School in Durham, students, teachers and staff members all complied with the district’s mandate to wear masks while indoors. It was the first day of classes for thousands of Durham Public Schools students who attend schools operating on a traditional calendar. Most of the state’s 1.5 million students started classes this week. 

Lt. Gov. Robinson reports on complaints to oversight task force, while Senate committee approves controversial legislation White shaming, "sexualization" of children and Critical Race Theory are among six overarching themes Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson says emerged during his recently completed examination of North Carolina schools.

The Delta variant of COVID-19 is “several-fold” more transmissible than the Alpha variant, making mask mandates in schools more important than ever, a Duke University professor of pediatrics said Wednesday.  Dr. Danny Benjamin’s advice comes as most of North Carolina’s 1.5 million school children prepare to return to classrooms and school boards wrestle with whether to adopt mask mandates amid surging COVID infections.

If culturally responsive teaching is promulgated in North Carolina's public schools, students will learn that math is racist.  Students who are Black, LGBTQ or of minority ethnic backgrounds will be taught that teachers are bigots.  And educators will be allowed to engage in "age-inappropriate promotion" of homosexuality.

Are North Carolina’s teachers indoctrinating students with tenets of Critical Race Theory?  The state’s Republican leaders say they are, but struggled to provide solid evidence Wednesday when asked to do so by Democratic colleagues.

The charter school movement began in earnest in North Carolina in 1997 when 34 schools opened across the state. There are now 200 charter schools in operation.  The 1996 Charter School Act that established the system of tuition free, public schools that are not bound by many of the rules as traditional public schools was sponsored by Sen. Wib Gulley, a Democrat from Durham and Rep. Steve Wood, a Guilford County Republican.

As state legislatures have started their sessions, anti-public school legislators have wasted no time introducing “school choice” bills that would divert public funds to privatization schemes. In the first three weeks of January alone, 34 bills to expand private education options had been introduced in 15 states.

New report says “Opportunity Scholarship” voucher programs undermine public education, foster division, and undermine children’s development while also costing the state millions During the 2020 legislative session at the North Carolina General Assembly, lawmakers made changes to the state's Opportunity Scholarship program that will cost the state approximately $272 million over the next 10 years...

WASHINGTON—In four years in office, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos failed to broaden her appeal beyond the moment she won a wild Senate confirmation fight by the closest of margins. She didn’t even try. Instead, the billionaire Michigan native and Republican megadonor championed private and charter schools, often trying to funnel federal funding toward them. Her full-throated support outraged Democrats in Congress, riled the nation’s powerful teachers unions and never registered as a major priority for the Trump administration.