Education

New superintendent of innovation has strong North Carolina ties

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42 mins ago
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State Superintendent Mark Johnson has appointed veteran North Carolina educator David Stegall superintendent of innovation at the Department of Public Instruction.

Stegall will start work in June.

He replaces Eric Hall, who resigned this month to accept a chancellor position at the Florida Department of Education.

Stegall is currently superintendent of US Curriculum Schools for GEMS Education in Dubai, UAE.

He is the former superintendent of Newton-Conover City Schools, where 100 percent of schools met or exceeded growth in his final two years on the job.

Stegall was named regional Superintendent of the Year in 2017, and developed a national award-winning STEM school, a national award-winning Leader in Me school, a state-recognized personalized learning school and a successful dual-language school, among other accomplishments.

“Dr. Stegall’s wealth of experience and passion for innovative approaches make him a great fit for our team at DPI,” Johnson said. “His addition to the agency means we won’t skip a beat in our urgent drive to make North Carolina schools the best place to learn and the best place to teach.”

Stegall earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He holds a master’s degree in education administration from Gardner-Webb University and a doctorate in education leadership from Appalachian State University.

 

 

News

UNC Board of Governors members call for racial, gender representation

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2 hours ago
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Last week, as the UNC Board of Governors became entirely Republican for the first time in history, N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger dismissed concerns about diversity on the board.

“There’s a lot of diversity amongst Republicans,” Berger said.

Even some members of the board of governors, it seems, find that hard to swallow.

As Democratic lawmakers in Raleigh called for more political diversity in board nominations, several members of the board itself decided to highlight the lack of racial and gender diversity on the board and among boards of trustees across the UNC system.

“I believe we should be sensitive and aware of the lack of women and the lack of minorities serving in these positions,” said board member Pearl Burris-Floyd during the full board meeting Friday at Appalachian State University.

Pearl Burris-Floyd

In addition to being a former Republican state representative, Burris-Floyd is also a Black woman. In comments to the board, she outlined just how rare she is among those serving on leadership boards at universities across the state.

Seventy one percent of the nominees to UNC system boards of trustees were male in 2017, Burris-Floyd said. This year that number is 69 percent. The student population is 56 percent female, she said.

“That may not seem like much, but when you look around this table and you see the sprinkling of women and minorities serving the Board of Governors, then 2 percent is a big push,” Burris-Floyd said.

Still, she said, she would like to see the nominees better reflect the student body they serve.

“This is not a slam against men,” Burris-Floyd said. “I do believe, as an only girl growing up in a family of four boys, we have to work collaboratively together. And when we do that, the result is phenomenal.”

Board member Anna Spangler Nelson agreed on the need for improvement.

“Some of our boards of trustees do not reflect the race and gender of their communities and I hope we will continue to pay attention to that,” she said.

Last week’s appointment process wasn’t an improvement, in terms of diversity on the UNC Board of Governors itself.

Twelve seats were up for appointment. The legislature reappointed 10 current board members in party-line votes. The one Black Democrat on the board was not reappointed. The two new appointments went to white Republican men.

News

Both sides seek political leverage from Mueller’s findings

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3 hours ago
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WASHINGTON — The conclusions of the long-awaited report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller have Republicans declaring victory for President Trump, as Democrats demand more answers and pledge further investigations.

The four-page summary of Mueller’s report into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was submitted to lawmakers Sunday by Attorney General William Barr.

According to Barr, Mueller’s investigation did not find evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference. Mueller also declined to draw a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice, saying that while his report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Trump heralded the findings. “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!” the president wrote on Twitter Sunday.

Trump’s allies were quick to rally behind the president, portraying the entire exercise as a waste of time and money.

His spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, labeled the Mueller probe a “two-year waste of taxpayer time and dollars,” speaking on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday.

“Democrats in Congress who have stated that they found ‘ample evidence’ of collusion, that there was ‘direct evidence’ of collusion, and that there is a ‘cloud of treason’ surrounding the White House were wrong. These statements were lies,” Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said in a statement. “The people who spread these lies owe President Trump and the American people an apology.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have seized on the obstruction of justice comments in the report to call for further investigations. They continue to push for the release of the entire Mueller report.

“Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement.

“The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.  Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report.”

Pelosi and Schumer added that “for the president to say he is completely exonerated directly contradicts the words of Mr. Mueller and is not to be taken with any degree of credibility.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he plans to call Barr in to testify before his committee “in light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President.” He plans to summon Barr “in the near future,” he wrote on Twitter.

The U.S. House voted 420-0 earlier this month in support of a resolution to release the full Mueller report.

In a tweet, Democratic Congressman G.K. Butterfield from North Carolina’s First District called for a full release of the report, saying “Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has completed his investigation, transparency is paramount. It is absolutely imperative AG Barr expeditiously release the report to Congress an the American people.”

Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina’s 11th District tweeted “After 22 months of a special counsel and 2 years of congressional investigations, it’s over. The clock has finally struck midnight on the ‘Russian collusion’ fantasy. No collusion.”

Sanders said on the “Today” show Monday that the president is leaving it up to Barr to decide whether to release the report. “I don’t think the president has any problem with” releasing the report, she said. “He’s more than happy for any of this stuff to come out because he knows exactly what did and what didn’t happen.”

Robin Bravender is Washington Bureau Chief for The Newsroom network, of which NC Policy Watch is a member. Rob Schofield contributed to this report.

NC Budget and Tax Center

Berger-Moore spending target locks in current, failed path

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8 hours ago
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House Speaker Tim Moore (L) and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R)

House and Senate leaders have agreed to a spending target that will guide the development of both chambers’ two-year budget proposals this year before they have fully catalogued the needs in communities and discussed the smart public investments that help communities thrive.

While the proposed target of $24 billion dollars represents a year-over-year increase, it falls short of making progress toward meeting the unmet needs and backlog of projects in communities that could strengthen our economic foundation and the well-being of families.

The proposed spending amount would keep the budget a full $5.8 billion less than what would have been invested if we were at historic levels of public investment.  To be at the 45-year average of state spending as a share of the economy of 6 percent, the state budget would have to invest roughly $29 billion. It was that historic investment level that laid the foundation for economic advancement of our state, promoted improvements on a range of indicators of family well-being, and increased educational attainment and commercial activity.

Indeed, releasing a spending target without a debate about how the state will support the health and safety of its residents, connect our young people to educational opportunities, and connect our workers and businesses to the cutting-edge training and technology they need is the wrong place to start.

North Carolina deserves a budget that raises revenue to reconcile the needs of a growing state with the consequences of a flawed tax experiment that benefits the wealthy and big companies and has reduced revenues over time.

Delaying this conversation any further is fiscally irresponsible and keeps us on a path that is not structurally sound.

As we noted in a release last week, a higher tax rate on income over $1 million would be a good first step toward funding community priorities.  In combination with addressing the erosion of the corporate tax base and unsustainable cuts to the corporate tax rate, it is possible to put in place a tax code that meets our needs.

As states across the country regularly show, taxing wealth and investing in shared services is the best way to build a resilient and inclusive economy. Let’s be clear: Our state is still not providing a job to everyone who wants to work, still has fewer people employed as a share of the population than before the Great Recession, remains challenged by persistently high and concentrated poverty, and is among the least economically mobile states in the country.

A formula approach to our budget based on flawed economic theories and national groups’ soundbites is untethered to our state’s economic realities nor will it allow us to reach our full potential.

More than an arbitrarily low spending target, North Carolinians need and want our policymakers to commit to funding the programs and services that make early learning opportunities affordable and accessible for more young children and their parents, that eliminates the gap in health care coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, that makes housing affordable and safe in every community, and that provides opportunities to learn and build skills for jobs of the future.

North Carolina needs leaders to forge a new path based on what works to connect people to opportunity and grow our economy for all, not just the wealthy few.

News

North Carolina educators plan second march on Raleigh for better pay, education funding

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1 day ago
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North Carolina teachers marched for better pay last May.

Remember the big teacher march and rally last May that brought more than 19,000 educators to downtown Raleigh to demand better pay and increased funding for public schools?

Round 2 is planned for May 1.

“We think it’s going to be bigger than last year,” said Mark Jewell, president of the N.C. Association of Educators.

Jewell said teacher demands center on five items this year:

  • Additional funding to adequately staff schools with psychologists, social worker, nurses and  librarians.
  • Restoration of extra pay for advanced degrees.
  • Increasing the minimum wage for all school personnel to $15 an hour and a  5 percent cost of living raise for school employees and retirees.
  • Expansion of Medicaid to improve the health of students and their families.
  • Restoration of retiree health benefits for teachers hired after 2021.

“All of the things we marched for last year are not being addressed by the General Assembly,” Jewell said. “It’s time for us during this long session to remind them [lawmakers] that education still needs to be a priority.”

Jewell asked teachers to take a personal day May 1 to come to Raleigh for a day of action around K-12 issues. He  made the request during the NCAE’s annual convention, which took place in Raleigh March 22-23.

Here’s what Jewell told educators during the convention:

“I’m sad to say, we still have enemies on Jones Street; we’re fighting even now, for a budget that will prioritize student resources, educator pay and school safety, Some people still stand in the way of those basic, fundamental values. So, it’s time we paid them another visit. Just in case they need a reminder that we’re still here, and they still have a job to do.”

Throughout the weekend, news about the May 1 event was posted on social media sites

Dov Rosenberg, a NCAE member who teaches in Durham Public Schools made this Facebook post:

“BIG NEWS: Teachers across NC, pls take a personal day & join us in Raleigh on May 1!”

When asked about the post, Rosenberg said: “We are asking superintendents across our state to close schools on May 1 so educators and parents can converge on Raleigh to remind legislators to fund class size reductions, teacher assistants, master’s degree pay, Teaching Fellows, and an across the board, 5 percent pay raise.”

Julio Morales, the North Carolina director for the National Education Association, also posted news about the event on his Facebook page.

The NCAE is the state’s largest education advocacy organization for public school employees, and represents active, retired, and student members.

This story was updated March 25.

 

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