By Kris Nordstrom Senior Policy Analyst, North Carolina Justice Center RALEIGH (January 16, 2025) – If your goal was to dismantle North Carolina’s public school system, how would you do it? Would you starve schools of resources? Real per-student state funding is down 3.8 percent from 2009. North Carolina’s school funding effort (education spending as… READ MORE
Gov. Stein: Open doors of opportunity to every child
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following are excerpts from new Gov. Josh Stein’s inaugural address Saturday where he addressed several education issues.1 RALEIGH (January 11, 2025) – North Carolina Strong means opening the doors of opportunity to every child. There is no better investment in our future than providing excellent pre-K so that every child starts kindergarten,… READ MORE
Inaugural food for thought
RALEIGH (January 16, 2025) – When an Inaugural Ball where you’re expecting more than 2,000 people gets postponed, what do you do with all the food you’ve ordered? Facing the snowstorm that forced postponement of Gov. Josh Stein’s inaugural festivities last weekend, the Junior League of Raleigh and Empire Eats Catering didn’t hesitate with the… READ MORE
UNC Asheville makes hustle plays to reopen
By Eric Johnson ASHEVILLE (January 16, 2025) – On Wednesday afternoon, after more than three months of empty classrooms, UNC Asheville celebrated an extraordinary return for the spring semester. Over a welcome-back dinner of tacos and nachos inside Kimmel Arena, faculty, staff, and students greeted one another, swapped harrowing stories, and settled in to watch… READ MORE
Hopes for 2025
RALEIGH (January 2, 2025) – North Carolina’s General Assembly seems to consider itself all-powerful. Well here’s hoping that changes with the new year. Republicans lost their supermajority in the state House by a single seat in November’s elections, giving Gov. Josh Stein slightly more bargaining power with the legislature than his predecessor Roy Cooper had…. READ MORE
Vouchers’ impact on public school funding
RALEIGH (January 2, 2024) – Over the next several weeks, we will publish several short posts to address misinformation circulating about the North Carolina School vouchers called “Opportunity Scholarships.” These vouchers use public, taxpayer funds to pay for private school tuition. First up is the claim that Opportunity Scholarships do not divert funding from public… READ MORE