WRAL livestreamed today’s debate between Morrow and Green.
A transcript of that debate is also available.
And there were many times when Michele Morrow showed how uninformed she truly is about what being the top official in public education entails.
Here are some things she talked about:
“Well, as superintendent, I intend to do a deep dive into how money is being spent, not just at the DPI, but also within our 115 districts because I truly believe that our money is not starting at the classroom. There is a lot of administrative bloat.”
Remember when Mark Johnson made that same claim? He then spent a million dollars to pay Ernst & Young to perform an audit to find supposed “wasteful” uses of funds in DPI. That audit concluded that DPI was underfunded.
Furthermore, Morrow will never have the expertise, authority, or the ability to look at the budget of every LEA in North Carolina. Actually, most of the money that comes from the state for public education goes to salaries, which she says are not enough to begin with.
AND she has made the claim that she would deny federal funding if she didn’t “agree” with its intent.
Morrow said if she’s elected, her first step will be to “audit” federally funded programs at the Department of Public Instruction to see if they contribute to student achievement. If not, she said she’ll tell federal officials, “Back off. We don’t need your money, and we’re going to do it just as a state.”
Plus, she totally misinterprets the LEANDRO decision as it is telling us that NC has been underfunding our public school system for decades.
“Well, you know, most of the insights in that plan are already being dealt with in our budget. They’re talking about having safety in our schools. It’s talking about having quality educators, it’s talking about being able to recruit and retain them. And really the premise of this back 30 some years ago was that every county and it hoke was the one really that started. It, it was just a, it was a one county issue and then it grew to five counties.”
It’s like she never read the WestEd report at all. It is important to look at the entire report – Sound Basic Education for All – An Action Plan for North Carolina.
These are the 12 basic findings listed below.
- Finding #1: Funding in North Carolina has declined over the last decade.
- Finding #2: The current distribution of education funding is inequitable.
- Finding #3: Specific student populations need higher levels of funding.
- Finding #4: Greater concentrations of higher-needs students increases funding needs.
- Finding #5: Regional variations in costs impact funding needs.
- Finding #6: The scale of district operations impacts costs.
- Finding #7: Local funding and the Classroom Teacher allotments create additional funding inequities.
- Finding #8: New constraints on local flexibility hinder district ability to align resources with student needs.
- Finding #9: Restrictions on Classroom Teacher allotments reduce flexibility and funding levels.
- Finding #10: Frequent changes in funding regulations hamper budget planning.
- Finding #11: The state budget timeline and adjustments create instability.
- Finding #12: There is inadequate funding to meet student needs.
Her answer to the question about LEANDRO reflects an incredibly uneducated point of view.
“We talk about recruitment and retain. I just wanna put this in there real quick. When you look at teacher surveys, the number one complaint they have is that they don’t feel safe in the classroom.”
Actually, school safety is important, but it is not the top complaint. Respect for the profession is and part of that is compensation.
But since we are talking about safety, maybe a lot of students who do not act “civilly” learned it from people outside of school.
If she truly wanted to talk about respect for the teaching profession, then maybe she could also address her past words and claims.
“I also believe that what we need to do is we need to pay teachers more in more difficult areas to find a teacher. Like I think special ed, I think potentially if people are bilingual and you’re gonna help us with the ESL program, that would be excellent.”
Her comments on special education students and English Language Learners brought back some of her earlier comments that she went out of her way to film and post. And then delete.
“And if you sat down kids in a kindergarten and first grade class and at the beginning of the year you ask them, what are the rules that we should have in our classroom to ensure that everybody has a great experience. They’re gonna come up with the rules of being kind to one another and taking your turn and raising your hand and helping one another. Let them be the ones that are guiding that so that they understand, then they have ownership of what is expected of them in the classroom.”
Don’t recall her ever being a teacher herself in a public school.
She has never sent her children to public school while living in North Carolina. No serving with a school’s PTSA in NC. No involvement in an extracurricular activity sponsored by a NC public school that one of her children may be involved with.
How would she know about what happens in the classroom?
“Um I do not believe, I mean, resegregation is a or segregation is a legal term and there is no law on the books that I know of that is telling kids that you can or cannot go to a certain school. I think what we might be seeing is the fact that we do not have a quality education across the board. So parents are probably choosing to send their kids to another school and frantically trying to get them somewhere else where their kids are going to be able to learn and they’re going to be safe and they’re going to be able to reach their highest potential.”
Michele must never have looked at school performance grades and the effect of poverty on a school.
Michele must never have admitted that redlining is a real thing. Or that systemic racism exists. Of course, her gubernatorial preference, Mark Robinson, is someone who does not believe in system racism.
If Morrow was so convinced that all people who chose a different school than the public school and used public monies to do so made that decision based solely on academics, then every school that takes voucher money would have to be under the same transparency as public schools are.
And that mention of putting 2 SRO’s in each school for safety? Better find some more of that funding that she intends on cutting.
And just take a look at her closing statement.
caffeinated rage 