News & Views

Raymond C. Pierce (Photo courtesy of the Southern Education Foundation)

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that ended the legal segregation of American public schools.

Today, however, despite much progress on many fronts, resistance to racial integration in education remains stubbornly persistent and sadly, this is the case here in North Carolina, where the data show that many, many schools remain hugely and destructively segregated. So where does this leave us and what steps do leaders need to take to get things back on track? Recently NC Newsline  caught up with the President of one of the nation’s leading education research organizations – Raymond c. Pierce of the Southern Education Foundation – to get his assessment.

Elizabeth Barber - Photo: ACLU of NC

Just when you thought we were starting to put some of the more contentious debates that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to rest, the North Carolina legislature has revived the argument over face masks. Under a bill recently passed the by the state Senate, not only would penalties be increased for protesters who break the law while wearing face masks, but the very practice of wearing a mask in public – even for public health reasons – would be banned.

Meanwhile, in another proposal moving quickly through the legislature, a large part of the state’s groundbreaking 2019 “Raise the Age” law that ended the automatic treatment of 16- and 17-year-olds accused of crime as adults would be repealed, and recently Newsline caught up with one of most thoughtful and articulate critics both measures – ACLU of North Carolina Policy Director Liz Barber.

Paul Fulton shown with a billboard the group Public Ed works has sponsored across the state. (Courtesy photo)

For several decades in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, North Carolina’s public education system was widely celebrated as an up-and-coming national model. And a key to that success was the deep and abiding support of an array of forward-looking business leaders who understood that well-funded systems of K-12 and higher education were essential – for the state and its residents as well as for the quality of their workforces and, ultimately, their bottom lines. Unfortunately, in recent years, support for public education from business leaders has waned somewhat and that in turn has emboldened conservatives in the legislature to slash education funding. Now, however, some of the architects of the past success are pushing back against this trend and demanding a renewed commitment to school funding and recently we caught up with one of the most prominent members of that group – the board president of the nonprofit Public Ed Works, veteran corporate leader, Paul Fulton.

Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su

Over the past three-plus years there are few if any areas of public policy in which the Biden administration has been more active in advancing rules and practices designed to lift average people and those long left behind by the American economy than in the realm labor relations. Whether it’s promoting better wages and working conditions, creating more good, living wage jobs, or developing new and innovative strategies to help women and other underrepresented populations gain access to those jobs, the Biden team has been determined and persistent. And recently, as part of that effort, the nation’s Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su traveled to North Carolina for a series of events in which she met with local elected officials, labor leaders and average workers. And in between appearances, she was also kind enough to join Newsline’s Rob Schofield to share some of the details.

Lauren Fox, Senior Director, Policy & Research, Public School Forum (Photo: ncforum.org)

Earlier this month, one of our state’s leading and most respected champions of public education, the Public School Forum of North Carolina, held its annual Eggs and Issues breakfast in Raleigh. The event drew several prominent elected officials and candidates from both parties – all of whom endorsed the idea that the state must do much more to fund and support public education.

Unfortunately, as we learned in a recent conversation with the Forum’s Senior Director of Policy and Research, Lauren Fox, Republican legislative leaders were not among that group and they continue to largely ignore the Forum’s repeated pleas for things like better teacher pay, better services to address student mental health needs, and enactment of the court-ordered comprehensive school improvement plan from the Leandro school funding lawsuit.

Read the Forum’s report: Top Education Issues 2024-25 Measuring Progress.

North Carolina's childcare industry could see a serious reduction in its workforce without additional help. Stabilization grants run out in June. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)

North Carolina childcare providers are facing a potentially disastrous financial cliff in June. During the pandemic, the federal government provided significant relief dollars that helped thousands of providers stay open by raising worker salaries to minimally adequate levels. Unfortunately, those relief dollars are scheduled to run out next month.

To call attention to this situation, many providers across the nation briefly closed their centers last week as part of a National Day Without Childcare and one of those providers was Emma Biggs, the director of the Pathway Preschool Center in Charlotte. And as Biggs reminded NC Newsline when we caught up with her for a brief interview, if elected leaders fail to step in to replace the expiring funds, as many as 1,500 childcare centers across North Carolina serving nearly 92,000 children and their families will soon be at risk of going out of business.

Childcare providers, workers, and parents converged on the General Assembly on May 16th to let lawmakers know what it would be like if all those centers were to close, leaving working parents scrambling to find a solution. Click below to view our photo gallery of “A Day Without Childcare.”

North Carolina's childcare industry could see a serious reduction in its workforce without additional help. Stabilization grants run out in June. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)

Cannabis advocate and consultant Chris Suttle (Courtesy photo)

Medical marijuana is now legal and accessible for the vast majority of Americans, but one state that remains a stubborn holdout is North Carolina. A state Senate bill known as the Compassionate Care Act would change that by allowing patients suffering from a list of illnesses to gain access. The bill is sponsored by a conservative Republican and enjoyed bipartisan support when it won Senate approval last year, but right now, House Republicans refuse to take it up.

So, is there a chance the measure will pass during the ongoing short session and what are proponents of the bill doing and saying to try and break the logjam?

NC Newsline caught up with one of the bill’s most outspoken champions, cannabis advocate and consultant, Chris Suttle.

Suttle shares details on a May 24th trip for legislators to North Carolina’s first marijuana dispensary run by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He believes the guardrails they have put in place may alleviate some concerns that conservative lawmakers have about moving forward with Senate Bill 3.

Sen. Michael Garrett (Photo: NCGA)

Republican legislative leaders are moving swiftly to dramatically expand the state’s controversial private school voucher program. A bill quickly advancing will appropriate nearly $500 million new dollars to thousands of middle- and upper-income families to help cover the cost of private school tuition.

Not surprisingly, the plan has drawn sharp criticism for Democratic lawmakers – who are angered at the idea of appropriating such huge sums to aid well-off private schools and families of means at the same time public schools and the state’s childcare system are suffering mightily. The voucher debate also comes as North Carolina is facing a childcare cliff in June, that could see many centers close their doors or be forced to raise prices dramatically for working parents.

One lawmaker who’s been especially thoughtful on both issues is Guilford County state Senator Michael Garrett, and last week,  NC Newsline caught up with him in his Raleigh office.

El Pueblo director Iliana Santillan (File photo)

For several years now, North Carolina Republican legislators have been attempting to enact a law that would impose a one-size-fits-all approach on county sheriffs when it comes to dealing with the immigrant communities they serve. The proposal would mandate that sheriffs act as, in effect, adjuncts of federal immigration enforcement – even when the sheriffs have made the determination that doing so will endanger public safety by causing community cooperation with their offices to plummet.

In the past, Gov. Roy Cooper has successfully vetoed the legislation, but in recent weeks, the proposal has reemerged. Recently, in order to get a better handle on where things stand and why proposals like this represent the wrong approach to our state and national immigration policy challenges, NC Newsline caught up with one of the state’s leading advocates for immigrant communities, the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group El Pueblo, Iliana Santillan.

Photo: ncsu.edu

It’s now been 70 years since the United States Supreme Court ordered an end to racial segregation in public schools in the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education. And while resistance to desegregation never went away, there was a window of time in the late 20th and early 21st Century in which many states and localities – including North Carolina — made enormous headway in building diverse and integrated public school systems.

Unfortunately, as a new report from researchers at NC State makes clear, that momentum in our state has waned and now things are trending in the opposite direction. The report is entitled “Can Our Schools Capture the Education Gains of Diversity? North Carolina School Segregation, Alternatives and Possible Gains.” It was recently published in the journal of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and recently I caught up with one of the authors, NC State Assistant Professor of Education, Dr. Jennifer Ayscue.

Read the report: Can Our Schools Capture the Education Gains of Diversity? North Carolina School Segregation, Alternatives and Possible Gains. It was published earlier this month by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.