Bryan Proffitt, vice president of the NC Association of Educators, was working as a furniture packer in 2004 when offered his first K-12 teaching job.
The competition for teaching positions in North Carolina was so fierce, Proffitt remembers, that he didn’t get a job offer until two weeks into the new school year despite having an advanced degree, teaching license, great recommendations and two years of experience as a university instructor under his belt.
“I was packing up someone’s house when I got the call that I got a job,” Proffitt said during an NCAE press conference Tuesday. “It was like getting called up to the majors. I couldn’t believe it.”
A lot has changed in 18 years, Proffitt said. Teaching jobs in the state are no longer coveted, and many educators are making the hard decision to quit the profession due to low pay and terrible working conditions.[Read more…]
2. With “go everywhere” strategy, Beasley breaks with Democratic playbook for statewide races
In her attempt to break the Democratic Party’s streak of loses in U.S. Senate races, Cheri Beasley has billed herself as a different kind of Democrat.
Over the past year, perhaps the most convincing case for that has been the stops on her itineraries.
As expected, on the list are the state’s burgeoning urban centers, the core of Democrats’ base. But there have been just as many town halls and meet and greets in small towns and rural zip codes not often visited by statewide candidates.
The former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court trails three-term congressman Ted Budd in the most recent polling, but remains within the margin of error, even in a year in which Democrats face strong headwinds. [Read more…]
3. NC Elections Board proposes more detailed rules for poll-observer conduct
The state Board of Elections is considering tighter rules for partisan elections observers that outline what they can do at polling places.
The revised rules grew from a survey of local elections officials after the May primary.
The proposed rules “are necessary to ensure election workers and voters are not interfered with and the voting process is not disrupted in any way,” state Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon said in an email. “State law specifically prohibits observers from electioneering at voting sites and from impeding the voting process or interfering with or communicating with voters. These proposed rules are designed to ensure observers comply with the law.”
Election observers aren’t supposed to talk to voters or elections workers, except for the chief judge. They sign up to work four-hour shifts. They are supposed to be in an area of the polling place where they can see and hear the interactions between poll workers and voters, but they aren’t allowed to enter a voting booth, try to look at ballots, or take pictures.[Read more…]
Contaminated soil from a Superfund site in Navassa will be shipped to one of three landfills outside Brunswick County, likely moving toxic pollution from one non-white or low-income community to another.
The proposed cleanup plan, approved by the EPA in late May, highlights the environmental injustices that occur when counties, regulators and polluters offload their problems to communities of color.
From 1936 to 1974, Kerr-McGee and its predecessors operated a wood treatment plant on 244 acres of a former rice plantation in the historically Black community of Navassa. The company applied creosote to utility poles, railroad ties and other wood products to repel pests and prevent rot.
Decades of misuse poisoned the site with carcinogens, including dioxins and PAH, also known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. To shield itself from environmental liability, Kerr-McGee spun off a company, Tronox, which declared bankruptcy in 2009. The site entered the Superfund program the next year.[Read more...]
5. State Treasurer Dale Folwell should be doing a better job of investing NC pension funds
PW investigation raises important questions about holding billions of dollars in cash
In a way, there’s something almost quaint about the investment strategy that North Carolina’s conservative Republican treasurer, Dale Folwell, pursues for the massive pension funds he oversees for the state’s public employees and retirees.
In a nation in which conservatism once connoted concepts like caution, self-denial and modest expectations rather than the greed, instant gratification and trickledown ethic that have become its 21st century hallmarks, Folwell’s unusual decision to de-emphasize stock market holdings is, if nothing else, strikingly retro.[Read more...]
6. Biden signs landmark bill aiding veterans exposed to burn pits overseas
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed legislation into law Wednesday that will provide health care and benefits to veterans exposed to burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq, achieving a long-term, personal goal.
“I was in and out of Iraq over 20 times,” Biden said of prior trips to the war zone he took as both a U.S. senator and as vice president. “And you could actually see some of it in the air — burn pits the size of football fields, and incinerated waste of war such as tires, poisonous chemicals, jet fuel, and so much more I won’t even mention.”[Read more…]
7. Two men serving life sentences lobby lawmakers to expand parole eligibility
Two men serving life sentences are trying to get legislators to pass a bill expanding parole eligibility.
Phillip Vance Smith II first met Craig Wissink in 2004, toward the beginning of the life sentences the men were serving for separate murders. Smith thought Wissink was a friendly guy, the type who was always trying to make those around him laugh. The pair lost touch for about 10 years, a gap in a friendship common among imprisoned men subjected to unanticipated transfers to other correctional facilities.
They reconnected around 2013, when the two were incarcerated at Nash Correctional Institution. They caught up by walking laps around the rec yard, talking about where their other friends were doing their time. Wissink shared his art with Smith — cards and portraits he made for others, for a price — letting him in on the secrets of his craft.
It wasn’t an entirely happy reunion. Wissink seemed different to Smith. He remembered the Wissink from a decade earlier as a gentle, kind man who read the Bible and was always joking around. Now, Wissink seemed like he was always high on marijuana and popping pills. He seemed anxious; his face used to always be curved in the shape of a wide smile. Now, it looked perpetually locked in a frown. Wissink wasn’t just doing time anymore; he was passing it by any means necessary.[Read more...]
8. To prevent shootings, teachers need to be armed with information, not guns
Schools do not need more resource officers, armed guards or for that matter armed teachers. Schools need to become adept at gathering information, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, making sense of what they learn.
In Uvalde, Texas we’ve learned far too well that good guys—many good guys—with guns can’t always stop a bad guy with a gun. In Florida, Nikolas Cruz is on trial for his life after killing 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The school’s resource officer is also criminally charged for failing to enter the school and confront Cruz.
Nearly every school in America has prepared for a shooting. The Washington Post reported that more than 96 percent of public schools hold active-shooter drills. [Read more...]
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