Hundreds of UNC health professionals, med students and faculty push for compromise on Medicaid expansion

By
September 14, 2022
In Education, Higher Ed, News, public health

Hundreds of UNC medical and nursing students, health professionals, faculty and alumni are asking the head of UNC Health to push the N.C. Health Association to compromise in the current debate over Medicaid expansion in North Carolina.

In a letter delivered Wednesday morning, the group asks Dr. Wesley Burks, CEO of UNC Health, to consider leaving the N.C. Healthcare Association if it will not soften its position on loosening Certificate of Need (CON) laws. The N.C. General Assembly’s GOP majority insist on changes to those laws before passing legislation to expand Medicaid. Loosening them could provide more competition for hospitals, changes for telemedicine and more independence for advanced practice nurses. While the association has supported medicaid expansion for years, it has stopped short of negotiating on CON laws to achieve it.

UNC Health professionals, medical students, faculty and alumni are pushing for negotiating on laws that could increase hospital competition in order to achieve Medicaid expansion.

“Our current political reality is that the only Medicaid expansion bill that can pass the NC legislature has to include CON reform,” the letter to Burks reads. “NCHA’s refusal to negotiate on CON laws effectively mounts opposition to Medicaid expansion in North Carolina, despite the fact that the current CON provisions have done demonstrably little to reduce costs, increase access to care, or advance health equity. Ample evidence shows that Medicaid expansion achieves all three of these goals, and thus should be prioritized.”

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has also called for compromising on certificate of need laws in order to achieve Medicaid expansion, saying it has taken too long for Republicans to agree on the need for expansion and industry lobbies shouldn’t stand in the way now that it is in reach.

Read more

Confronting history, Congress studies addition of lynching sites to national park system

By
September 13, 2022
In Education, News, race

First lady Jill Biden urges students at N.C. A&T to consider teaching careers

By
September 13, 2022
In Education, News

Miguel Cardona

U.S. first lady Jill Biden on Monday urged students attending historically Black N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro to consider a teaching career.

Surrounded by elementary school students from the university’s new Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (S.T.E.M.)-themed Aggie Academy, Biden said students of color deserve teachers who “look like them and who can understand their paths.”

Jill Biden

All students benefit when schools employ teachers from diverse backgrounds, Biden said.

“To better serve all of our students, our classrooms need diverse perspectives and the chance to learn from teachers of every single background and that’s why we’re here today to recruit you,” Biden said.

The first lady is a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College.

N.C. A&T is one of three minority-serving colleges recently selected to partner with the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program in hopes of increasing the number of students of color who train to become teachers. The other two are Fayetteville State University and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. They joined five predominately white colleges and universities already offering the program.

Teaching Fellows is a merit-based, loan-forgiveness program that provides up to $8,250 annually for up to four years to students who agree to teach in the fields of special education or S.T.E.M. in public schools.

Biden acknowledged the challenges of recruiting teachers due to expensive student loans, low salaries, large class sizes and safety concerns.

Many educators have made the tough decision to walk away from the profession, Biden said.

“If we want to add more bright, talented people into this field, if we want educators to be able to do what they do best, we have to give them the support that they or you all deserve,” Biden said. “We have to come to places like North Carolina A&T and say, we need you.”

Last month, North Carolina began the school year short by a reported figure of 4,400 teachers.  There is a growing national debate about the severity of a national teacher shortage and its causes and whether one really exists.

The first lady said teachers make the best recruiters.

“We have to use our teacher voice to make people listen and let the world know what this work means to us and how we change lives every single day,” Biden said.

Biden was joined by the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to kick off the Department of Education’s “Road to Success Bus Tour.” The week-long, multi-state road trip will showcase the ways school communities are helping students recover from the pandemic and thrive. Biden and Cardona also visited Tennessee on Monday to highlight ways states and districts are recruiting and preparing qualified educators into the classroom.

Cardona said too many students will be denied the opportunity to reach their full potential because of who they are and where they live. Read more

The week’s top stories: Arsenic in NC well water, the bedeviling issue of merit pay, and a bill codifying same-sex marriage nears critical vote in U.S. Senate

By
September 11, 2022
In Commentary, Education, News

1. Latest polling finds big gap in candidate “favorability” ratings is influencing NC’s U.S. Senate race

With the start of early voting just seven weeks away, Democrat Cheri Beasley continues to run stronger than pundits had projected.

It’s probably just a coincidence that the Pantone company chose “Very Peri,” a vibrant purple, as its 2022 color of the year, but it would be hard to find a better shade to describe North Carolina’s electorate. Both are trending this fall.

Last week, yet another poll showed the U.S. Senate race between Representative Ted Budd and former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley effectively tied, the fourth poll in a row to do so.

Early on, head to head polls showed Budd well in the lead. But the last time he was up beyond the margin of error was in mid-June. [Read more…]

2. Lincoln County slow to respond to extremely high levels of cancer-causing arsenic in residents‘ drinking water

By Lisa Sorg

It’s still unclear if the source of the arsenic is naturally occurring or a former lithium mine  

Before Abby and Jason Hollis bought their 1,200-square-foot house on Laboratory Road in rural Lincolnton, the inspector required them to test their drinking water well, a routine step when purchasing a home.

Good news: Test results from 2007 showed no E. Coli or other bacteria that could send them retching to the emergency room.

Then Jason Hollis later heard about a co-worker in Hickory whose well contained arsenic. The Hollises decided to test their water for the contaminant, “on a whim,” Abby said.

Bad news: The results showed the Hollises unknowingly had been drinking poisoned water for three years.

Arsenic levels in their well have been as high as 328 parts per billion – more than 30 times the EPA regulatory standard of 10 ppb. However, no amount of arsenic is safe. Long-term exposure to arsenic through drinking or cooking has been linked to skin, bladder, lung and kidney cancer. It’s also been linked to neurological problems, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart and lung disease. [Read more...]

3. Merit pay questions continue to bedevil commission examining new teacher pay and licensure proposal

Questions about whether a controversial licensure and pay proposal for North Carolina’s teachers constitutes merit pay continue to bedevil state education leaders.

Members of the Professional Education Preparation and Standards Commission (PEPSC) discussed the topic Thursday after it met to begin fine-tuning a draft of the new licensure and pay plan to send to the State Board of Education (SBE) for its approval.

“I think that is something that needs clarity,” said Commissioner Connie Locklear, director of the Indian Resource Center for the Public Schools of Robeson County. “I think that is a concern with a lot of individuals in the field that they’re considering this merit pay.” [Read more…]

4. The right’s laughable and offensive attacks on Biden’s student loan debt relief program

There have been a lot of half-baked attacks on President Joe Biden’s recently announced initiative to forgive some of the crushing mountain of student loan debt that’s weighing down Americans of all ages.

There’s the claim that it will somehow worsen the inflation that’s been plaguing the global economy.

But as expert after expert has patiently explained, the program simply isn’t big enough to have such an impact. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observed with respect to the U.S.: “We’re talking about tens of billions a year in a $25 trillion economy. That’s basically a rounding error.”

And then there’s the offensive allegation that many of the people who will benefit are undeserving. Always sure-to-offend Texas Sen. Ted “Cancun-is-the-place-to-be-during-a-paralyzing-ice-storm” Cruz, alleged that the plan is about aiding pot smoking “slacker barista(s) who wasted seven years in college.”[Read more...]

5. U.S. education secretary urges boost in teacher pay, touts college debt relief

First Lady Jill Biden will accompany Sec. Miguel Cardona to NC next week as part of “Road to Success Back to School Bus Tour”

WASHINGTON — Amid K-12 teacher shortages, book bans and attacks over critical race theory, U.S. Education SecretaryMiguel Cardona at a meeting with reporters on Wednesday stressed the need for higher salaries to attract prospective educators to the profession.

Cardona also touted the Biden administration’s recent student debt relief announcement in late August. The White House said President Joe Biden will cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for Pell Grant borrowers and up to $10,000 for all other borrowers with an income of less than $125,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a household.

But Cardona acknowledged that the one-time student loan cancellation policy did not address the root cause of the student loan crisis, and “that will not fix the long-term issues.”[Read more...]

6. Panel to examine free speech, self-censorship at UNC

Like many colleges and university systems across the country, UNC has long been embroiled in a debate about free speech on campuses. In a politically volatile era in which extremist views have gone mainstream, the extent of free speech disagreements at UNC campuses is unclear, as are potential solutions.

On Sept 13, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Program for Public Discourse will hold the university’s first student-centered discussion on the issue. ”Can We Talk? Student Thoughts on Free Expression at UNC,” was sparked by a series of surveys about free speech — surveys that themselves have become controversial.

The panel will be held at 5:30 p.m. in Room 109 at Fetzer Hall at UNC-Chapel Hill and will be streamed online. Those interested can register here.

UNC-Chapel Hill professor Mark McNeilly, an outspoken conservative, will moderate the panel. McNeilly is on a team of researchers, including Timothy Ryan and Jennifer Larson, who launched a study at Chapel Hill that examined free speech issues on campus, Policy Watch has reported. [Read more...]

7. Bill codifying same-sex marriage nears critical vote in U.S. Senate

NC’s Tillis working to broker a deal, expresses optimism for a bipartisan agreement

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate is on track to vote on a bill codifying marriage equality as soon as next week with negotiators increasingly confident it could become law.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins said Wednesday they’re close to getting at least 10 Republicans to back the same-sex marriage measure, pushing it past the minimum number of senators required to clear the chamber’s legislative filibuster.

“I think the momentum is going in the right direction. And yeah, I think it’s gonna have good support,” Baldwin said. [Read more…]

8. Stopping school shootings before they happen

Behind state efforts to prevent targeted mass shootings

After the massacre of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, Gaston County Sheriff Alan Cloninger visited his alma mater, Carr Elementary, in Dallas, North Carolina. What had once seemed innocuous design choices looked to Cloning like security risks that could be exploited by a gunman: the knee-high windows, the door in the back of classrooms that led to a playground.

“It was built at a time when we didn’t worry about this,” Cloninger told members of the Governor’s Crime Commission last Thursday. “And the majority of our schools are that way still.”

Cloninger’s tour of Carr Elementary was part of his work as a co-chair of a special committee on school shootings. He talked last week about the report he helped put out in 2019, the recommendations he had made that were never acted upon.

There have been many school shootings since Parkland. Among the most horrifying was last May, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“I knew after Texas that someone would be saying, ‘We got to do a study, we got to do a study,’” Cloninger said. “We’ve done a study.” [Read more…]

9. Weekly Radio Interviews and daily Radio Commentaries:

Click here for the latest radio interviews and commentaries with Policy Watch Director Rob Schofield.

10. Weekly Editorial Cartoon:

Elizabeth City State University records new eight year peak for students, continuing recovery from enrollment struggles

By
September 9, 2022
In Education, Higher Ed, News

Elizabeth City State University recorded 2,149 students this academic year, the school announced this week – the highest student count in eight years.

ECSU, the smallest of the UNC System’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) faced enrollment struggles since its peak of about 3,000 students, but has recently seen a period of growth, with greater success recruiting both in-state and out of state first-year students, transfer and graduate students.

Chancellor Karrie Dixon attributed the continued growth to the NC Promise program, which offers  $500 per semester at four UNC System campuses – Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University.

“ECSU’s steady expansion in key demographic populations proves that the power of NC Promise tuition program is helping us reach more scholars who desire to earn a highly competitive degree at an affordable cost,” said Dixon in a statement on the enrollment increase. “We are welcoming highly gifted scholars who possess strong academic credentials and are laser focused on their collegiate success. We are also attracting students looking to continue and complete their education, which leads to economic mobility for our graduates locally, regionally and in North Carolina.”

Elizabeth City State University

The student population at ECSU increased by 4.6% from the 2022 to the 2023 academic year, with growth seen in most student categories. The university increased its first year students both from in-state and out of state for the fifth consecutive year. Sixty five percent of first year students were from North Carolina. The school also saw growth among first-year students from out of state, a trend the UNC Board of Governors was hoping to see continue when it raised the cap on out-of-state students at the system’s HBCUs.

Last year, the UNC Board of Governors raised that cap to 25% at all five of the system’s HBCUs.

In April, the system’s board of governors approved raising the cap to 35% at N.C. A&T and N.C. Central University and to 50 percent at Elizabeth City State University. The cap at Fayetteville State University and Winston-Salem State University will remain at 25%.

Graduate students at ECSU also increased 20 percent over the 2021 academic year to 116. That’s the highest number the school has recorded in a decade.

“This year, we are seeing how both the value and demand of the ECSU education are bringing new Vikings to our community,” said Dr. Farrah Ward, provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. “Aviation Science, our signature program, is the top intended major for first-time freshman, along with Business Administration, Psychology, Biology and Sports Management.”

In April ECSU announced it would provide a one-time $1,000 housing grant to each student living on campus in the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters, capitalizing on a recent survey of U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard data that found the campus to be the most affordable HBCU in the nation.

Late last month the university announced it had received more than $100,000 in grants for two library-related projects. The university will use the money to update the digital inventory and self-checkout systems at its G.R. Little Library as well as becoming a satellite office for the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s work digitizing historical documents, photographs and newspapers.

Previous 1 2 34 5 Next