In response to a recent Carolina Journal opinion piece written by Glen Stephens, who acknowledges the poor record of North Carolina’s services to its academically and physically challenged students, let me say, I share your frustration. I have a child with developmental and academic challenges. Public schools could not accommodate my child’s unique learning needs,...
In 2022, North Carolina spent $16.7 billion in state, federal, and local funds on its public schools. Those funds were distributed to local schools using 50 different funding formulas. People frequently focus on how much money was distributed, which is important. Equally important, however, is to evaluate how that money is distributed. In recent years,...
Like many other New Hanover County citizens, I was blindsided when New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Dr. Charles Foust and his administrative staff made a sudden announcement immediately after last Thanksgiving that the Career Readiness Academy at Mosley (commonly called “Mosley”) is being closed and the students enrolled there will be forced to transfer to...
The Tar Heel state is third best in the nation for the growth of public charter schools during the pandemic, trailing only Texas and Florida, according to a new report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Nationwide, charter schools have gained more than 300,000 students since the 2019-2020 school year, while traditional public schools have...
UPDATE: Wake County, including the capital city of Raleigh, will end its indoor mask mandate starting Feb. 25. That announcement came on Friday afternoon, February 18, 2022 The Wake County Public School System announced in a letter to parents on its website Friday, Feb. 18, that masks will become optional in their schools “in the...
The state’s Department of Health and Human Services says its newly revised K-12 Toolkit is a guideline for school districts, but it won’t hold up to state laws. The clarification came in a January letter to Sen. Deanna Ballard, R-Watauga. “The toolkit itself is not a legally enforceable document but rather a strong recommendation for...
North Carolina ranks among the bottom 10 states in the country on Politico’s new State Pandemic Scorecard. The Tar Heel State’s overall ranking of No. 41 combines high marks for health and the economy with low scores for social well-being and education. “From the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the toughest decisions about how...
Update: On Tuesday, August 3, 2021, The Wake County School Board voted unanimously to require masks for kindergarten through twelfth-grade students for the Fall 2021 semester regardless of vaccine status. Given the freedom to choose whether to mandate masks for students, school boards across the state have begun voting to make face coverings optional for...
It is too often the case that media outlets will cite a research paper, cherry-pick information, and make misleading claims about what the findings entail. Unfortunately, this is precisely what our friends at NC Policy Watch have done in their recent piece about a study from Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy that examined...
President Biden is expected to announce Thursday, July 29, that all federal employees must be vaccinated or submit to rigorous COVID testing. That would include members of the military. The White House Office and Management already announced an employee mask mandate in all federal buildings. The announcement would come the same day that Gov. Roy...
Gov. Roy Cooper will allow existing state mask mandates to expire on July 30, but he’s recommending required masking for public school students in kindergarten through middle school. Cooper emphasized those changes during a Wednesday afternoon press conference on updated state COVID-19 guidance. Cooper began the press conference encouraging vaccination and reporting that 60% of...
