In North Carolina this year, you have two choices: You can vote for, or against, your child’s school.
Just days before the school year started, Guilford County announced bus transportation changes, leaving families to quickly reroute their morning schedules and plans. This decision to enforce “walk zones” (children living close to their school will no longer be able to request being picked up by a bus) was necessary given an ongoing bus driver shortage in the county, and that shortage boils down to just one thing: Money.
“Our bus driver vacancies mirror that of other districts like ours. We’re fortunate to have the bus drivers that we have. We couldn’t do school without them,” said Guilford County Superintendent Dr. Whitney Oakley in her State of the Schools address. “But we also understand that bus drivers can go work for Publix or Harris Teeter and make significantly more money without 60 students behind them.”
It’s not just Guilford County. These frustrating last-minute changes and cuts are becoming standard as administrators struggle to stretch dollars. Just as students let out for summer break, Alamance County announced that their budget shortfall was forcing them to cut summer school. Mold and disrepair in Person County school buildings could delay the start of school for some children there. Nearly every school district in North Carolina has their story of how the deep underfunding of public education is coming to a head in their town.
It’s hard to ring the alarm about our public schools being underfunded. It’s a truth we have lived with for so long that the deep obscenity behind it barely makes us blink. Nationally, North Carolina ranks 48th in per-pupil funding, spending $4,655 less than the national average. We are ranked at 38th in teacher pay, with our teachers making almost $13,000 less on average than teachers elsewhere.
The defunding of public education is a national trend. Still, it is particularly visceral here in North Carolina where dismantling public education is a decades-old pet political project of the far-right. Living with our schools in a continued state of disrepair (I think about the dozens of buckets set up in my son’s middle school gym catching the rain) and with underpaid staff (I think of my many friends who have left teaching because they couldn’t make ends meet) has acclimated a generation to conditions so poor that we hardly can imagine what public education could be…or what it would be like to have state leadership that tried.
But not trying is the point. The poor conditions are the point. Our public schools have been so decimated that they are struggling to function– and the far-right is using the conditions they created to prove that public education should be abandoned altogether. That is precisely what is behind the candidacies of Mark Robinson and Michelle Morrow.
Robinson, who is running for Governor, and Morrow, who is running for Superintendent of Public Instruction, have repeatedly attacked our state’s students, teachers, and schools. Robinson has called hardworking educators “wicked people” and as Lieutenant Governor has used state resources to harass educators about so-called “indoctrination” in school. Morrow has called our public schools “indoctrination centers” and declared public education to be “the greatest threat to humanity.”
It’s not just these candidate’s incendiary rhetoric: Their actual policy proposals are likewise designed to undermine public education. Robinson wants to eliminate science and history curriculums from elementary schools while Morrow wants to weaken curriculum requirements and arm teachers. Both have engaged in efforts to undermine and censor teachers. Both have expressed support for rejecting $1.5B+ in education funding given to our state by the federal government. Both have advocated for abolishing the US Department of Education– an idea highlighted in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term.
In short, forcing the failure of our public schools is their agenda. But why? Our public education system has been the greatest equalizer and creator of opportunity in our nation’s history. It is perhaps the most familiar and beloved public service the vast majority of us utilize, bringing countless memories and benefits to our families and communities. But both Robinson and Morrow support siphoning our tax dollars from public schools into unaccountable private schools and handouts for millionaires. So to answer the question of why they are doing this, the short version is that their candidacies are not about us. Their candidacies are about their wealthy donor. Their candidacies are about them.
There’s no evidence that Robinson or Morrow, who homeschooled her children, have spent much time in North Carolina’s schools, but most of us have. Most of us have walked the hallways lined with art, cheered our student-athletes from the sidelines, attended PTA meetings in the cafeteria, and bought school supplies for our teachers. We understand our schools as a public good and community project. We know that our schools’ impact and quality are reflective of what we put in. That’s why this fall we must vote to protect our children’s future and their right to learn, to be themselves, to be safe, to be prepared.
Originally published in the Greensboro News and Record.
