Governor Stein will have friends

Attorney General Josh Stein won a decisive, 15 percentage-point victory Tuesday over Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to become North Carolina’s next governor.

Stein will undoubtedly be friendlier to public education than Robinson. Stein has called for strong funding for public schools in line with decisions in the long-running Leandro school funding case and for raising teacher pay.¹

And he has opposed expansion of taxpayer-funded vouchers for students to attend private schools.

“The (voucher) bill … is taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from public schools, taxpayer money, to give to private schools to fund unaccountable education for children,” he said of Republican legislators’ latest effort to expand spending on vouchers by some $500 million,² and $4 billion over the next decade.

With a party switch last year by Rep. Tricia Cotham, R-Mecklenburg, Republicans currently hold exactly the three-fifths majority in each chamber of the General Assembly that they need to override the governor’s vetoes. And they have done so repeatedly with bills vetoed by outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper.

THE RESULTS of a few other elections this week, though, should make it a bit easier for Stein to pursue his education agenda.

Results aren’t official yet – and there could be recounts in a few races – but it appears Democrats have gained at least one seat in the 120-member state House to take away Republicans’ veto-proof majority in that chamber.³

If that stands, it would strengthen Stein’s negotiating power with the legislature when the new legislature convenes in January – legislators will have to take his veto threats more seriously than they have Cooper’s.

“For too long, the supermajority has operated without checks, pursuing extreme agendas that left too many North Carolinians behind,” said House Minority Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham.

“(I’ve) never been of the opinion that a supermajority is healthy for North Carolina,” said Dante Pittman, a Democrat with a narrow lead in a Nash-Wilson County district. “We don’t need one party having all the control over the state legislature. So I’m looking forward to that healthy balance so we can come to the table and govern from the middle of the road.”⁴

That said, Republican legislative leaders have been skilled at luring moderate or rural Democrats to support Republican legislation on big issues such as the state budget.

So sustaining the new governor’s vetoes won’t be a sure thing.

THE OTHER ELECTION RESULT that should help Stein is that Democrat Mo Green defeated Republican Michele Morrow to become the state’s next superintendent of public instruction and oversee an $11 billion state education budget.

Green is seasoned, serving as an administrator in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, superintendent of Guilford County Schools and then executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Increasing teacher pay is Green’s top priority as an advocate for public schools. He also wants to focus on improving literacy, character development and access to mental health care.⁵

Morrow – who homeschools her own children, attended the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol and called for the execution of Barack Obama on pay-per-view TV – would have meant chaos for public education.

We’re glad North Carolina voters said no to Morrow.

SO SOME OF THE PLAYERS will change. But the statistics haven’t:

•Average teacher pay in North Carolina went from 36th among the states to 38th in 2022-23. For 2023-24, North Carolina average teacher pay is projected to rank 41st – next-to-last in the Southeast, and behind both Mississippi and Alabama.⁶

•More than 10,000 teachers (11.5% of the total) left North Carolina classrooms last year – the most in two decades. The result is the state started the school year with 3,000 vacant teaching positions. And it continued to hire an increasing percentage of unlicensed teachers.⁷

•Though teacher raises haven’t nearly kept pace with inflation in recent years, state legislators approved no additional raises for teachers this year beyond the 3% raises they approved last year – despite a budget surplus of more than $1 billion.⁸

•North Carolina has seen a 51% decline in enrollment in its educator preparation programs over the past decade.⁹

•Schools across the state have seen shortages of bus drivers,¹⁰ forcing teachers to repeat lessons when a bus arrives late.

•North Carolina ranks 49th among the states in the percentage of its economy it devotes to K-12 public education.¹¹

Public education is the bedrock of a civil society. More than 80% of the state’s children still attend public schools. It is time to take care of the folks who teach our kids.

COOPER VETOED the bill that would further expand vouchers for private schools in North Carolina. He noted that vouchers tend to steer rural tax dollars to private schools clustered in metro areas.

The tax dollars the bill devotes to vouchers could be used to give public school teachers an 8-1/2% raise and a $1,500 retention bonus, he said.¹²

With their supermajority in jeopardy, Republican legislators will be tempted to return for a lame-duck session before the end of the year, override Cooper’s veto of the voucher bill and further curtail the governor’s powers.

But now – when the state faces $53 billion in damage from Hurricane Helene,¹³ mostly in Republican-dominated counties in Western North Carolina – is no time to be sending tax dollars to private schools.

¹https://www.wral.com/story/nc-gubernatorial-candidates-clash-over-whether-schools-need-more-money/21418807/; https://www.joshstein.org/press-releases/as-north-carolinas-teachers-leave-in-droves-josh-stein-calls-for-raising-teacher-pay-while-mark-robinson-calls-to-defund-public-education; https://www.the74million.org/article/in-north-carolina-public-education-is-at-the-heart-of-governors-race/.
² https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article292696119.html.
³https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article295136704.html;https://www.wral.com/story/some-nc-legislative-races-head-toward-recount-with-democrats-poised-to-break-gop-supermajority/21710769/.
⁴ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article295136704.html.
⁵https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/who-won-the-superintendent-of-public-instruction-race-in-nc-mo-green-michele-morrow/76089138007/
⁶ https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher;https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288227865.html.
⁷ https://www.wral.com/story/nc-teacher-turnover-hits-highest-mark-in-decades-new-report-shows-changes-in-who-is-leading-classrooms/21361469/.
⁸ https://publicedworks.org/2024/09/legislators-can-finish-the-job/.
⁹ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article292374609.html.
¹⁰ https://www.wral.com/news/local/durham-schools-bus-driver-shortage-october-2024/.
¹¹ https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2023/.
¹² https://www.wunc.org/education/2024-09-20/cooper-veto-private-school-vouchers-harm-rural-schools.
¹³ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article294412199.html.