Robinson and Morrow fail to learn lessons of the past

Published August 22, 2024

So, North Carolina should send the more than $1.7 billion a year that helps educate public school children back to the federal government.

What kind of wisdom is that from Mark Robinson, who wants to be governor and now sits on the state Board of Education, and Michele Morrow, who wants to be state Superintendent of Public Instruction?

Were they paying attention back in their school days where the study of history was, and for now still is, an essential element of a basic education?

From recent comments from Robinson and Morrow, we have to wonder where they were when the wisdom of philosopher George Santayana and Winston Churchill were the subjects. It is most elementary.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Churchill said in a 1948 speech in Parliament. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Santayana said in his 1905 work “The Life of Reason.”

The lesson they should have learned from history in North Carolina is not too far in the past – hardly a year.

Over more than a decade, until last December, the legislature’s refusal take federal funds to expand Medicaid came at a huge cost. More than 600,000 North Carolinians were not able to afford basic health care services.

The state lost out on more than $16 billion in federal dollars (taxes that North Carolinians paid) that instead flowed to other states to help their citizens with health care needs. Most significantly, as many as 18,000 North Carolina lives were likely lost due to the inability to access health care services.

North Carolina is the third worst in the nation (only South Dakota and Mississippi are worse) for citizens dealing with medical debt – 13.4%. Heath care costs are the main cause of bankruptcy for families – 62% of personal bankruptcies filed annually are because of medical debt.

So, knowing all of this, why would anyone, particularly those who want to lead North Carolina, want to send MORE of the taxpayers’ money back to be spent in other states?

“If I had my way about it, they’d send the check and I’d say, ‘Oh, no, you can have it. I don’t want your money. Your money comes with too many rotten obligations. We don’t want it,’” Robinson said. Robinson, as per his usual stump declarations, offered no details on what, if any, federal obligations he was concerned about.

Obligations and taxpayer accountability aren’t of much concern to Robinson when it comes to millions of state taxpayer dollars that flow to private schools in the form of vouchers. Schools that receive funding aren’t even required to show students attend class or that teachers are qualified at the same level as is required of public school teachers.

“People need to recognize that the federal government, along with every dollar that they give us, there is an expectation that we are going to push an agenda that comes from them, and that comes with strings,” Morrow said.

Again, Morrow didn’t offer any specifics. Are those strings things like showing that the federal dollars are really going to support students in the classroom? That kids are showing up and that their classrooms are being led by qualified instructors?

Are those requirements that students are provided with the proper resources to help them learn – like computers and internet access in schools; classrooms that are properly outfitted to help them learn; and school buildings that aren’t crumbling or overcrowded?

Those who seek to lead the state and the education of its children must demonstrate that they can learn. That they acknowledge the mistakes of the past and don’t repeat them.

The triumph of partisan politics and rigid ideological bias already came at a huge cost in the decade-long delay in expanding Medicaid.

We cannot let the same tragic fate come at the cost of the state’s school children and their future.

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