The candidates responded to questions on top education issues: teacher pay, teacher and principal recruitment and retention, early literacy, school performance grades, school choice, attainment, and parent engagement. They also argued for their abilities to lead DPI, administer a budget of $17.2 billion, and unite a variety of stakeholders with differing points of view.
Emphasis mine.
A recording of the debate will be publicly available in the coming days. The debate was hosted by BEST NC, a nonpartisan coalition of business leaders focused on education advocacy, and it was moderated by Chris Williams, executive producer of Carolina Business Review.
Differing points of view? Like, “the Jedi are evil” POV? I’ve seen that movie.
I thought that one North Carolina commenter, Ed Hinson below, had a great spark of insight.
We’re worried about the Secret Service protecting Trump, but not schoolkids? It’s only a big deal when your fathead political god gets shot at, but not kindergartners?
Where the fuck are your priorities, Tr/ance zealots? “Protect the Emperor”, yeah we know that story.
The person elected to lead the public schools of North Carolina ought to serve as a role model for the children of our state. **Michele Morrow, a statewide candidate for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, has called for the death of multiple public figures who hold political views different from her own. This is alarming. If elected, she would oversee all public schools in North Carolina. She would set an example for 1.5 million schoolchildren. She would be responsible for their safety and well-being.
WCNC’s Ben Thompson asked Morrow last week about social media posts in which she proposed executing President Biden and former President Obama. He compared this to the problem of online bullying in our schools. In the past, she has excused such statements as “sarcastic.” In this particular interview, she rationalized: “It is not bullying as a private citizen.”
As a former school board chair, I know what happens when students are caught posting online threats: They face serious consequences. Excuses like “I said that as a private citizen” or “I was being sarcastic” would not fly. We should expect at least the same level of accountability from candidates asking for our votes. Let’s send all candidates a message: Violent rhetoric disqualifies you from our votes. We owe this to our children.
Elyse Dashew, Charlotte, former chair, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education
Presidential rhetoric
Republican accusations that Democrats’ rhetoric is causing unhinged individuals to attempt to assassinate former President Trump are disturbing. If their point is that all sides should tone down the rhetoric, fair enough. But how can that be their point if their candidate for president repeatedly refers to his opponents as “communists” and “radical Marxist leftists” and constantly asserts that a Democratic victory would mean that we “won’t have a country anymore”? Not a peep from most Republican electeds about that.
Pat McCoy, Charlotte
Protecting children
Recent assassination close calls have some in Congress demanding more government spending to protect our political class. Meanwhile, the gun carnage continues unabated for American school children. Politicians and judges have decided nothing meaningful can be done to restrict the rights of mentally deranged people to have military-style assault weapons. Isn’t it time to protect the right to life of children after birth when they go to school? Since the Constitution allegedly allows nothing practical to restrict assault weapons, we need a massive expansion of government spending on the Secret Service to protect the lives of every school child in America.
TIL the word “Thrumpers”…and I thought I was being clever with “Tr/ance”.
For those who don’t know, that’s short for Bible Thumpers who vote for Trump, who literally fits their own description of the Antichrist in Revelations.
And here they go, just prior to the election, campaigning with the platform that God is destroying the East Coast because of the LGBTQIA+*.
(@PDA do you want that in a formal regular expression? Do you even know what that means?)
Elsewhere in North Carolina — an act of Satan?
The archfiend is afoot all over the place, to hear Michele Morrow tell it. She is the Republican candidate for North Carolina superintendent of public instruction, who believes that celebrities harvest the blood of children so as never to age, and the devil works for the United Nations killing people with vaccines. She is in a statistical tie with the Democrat.
Statistical dead heat (within the margin of error) between an insane religious nut who was at J6, and Mo Green, a perfectly normal person by any objective measure (not to be confused with the Jewish mobster and fictional Murder, Inc. hitman from the Godfather).
If she wins, every single public school in NC will be under her eye, and because of recent state legal changes there by the GOP, she will have no oversight…
Ironic, coming from a Christian zealot who doesn’t even have kids in public school, gets all her information from places like QAnon, and absolutely hates the LGBTQIA+ crowd because she thinks the Bible is what should really be taught (because she home schools her kids in it).
For the record, I’m pretty sure these numbers are related to state support for public education, and the Carolinas are failing because the GOP wants more bibles in there and private (religious) school vouchers.
Crazy religious zealots are trying to try to take over the entire NC public school system, and they might win in 4 weeks. Their first action will be banning books. These idiots don’t give a shit about law and order.
NC pastor escorted from Wake school board meeting in handcuffs. Was it a publicity stunt?
Wake County is now ground zero in the fight for the integrity of the NC public school system.
Morrow lost there, and decided that rather than tuck tail and go home to her bible, she needed to get enough GOP support to assault every school system in the state with book bans, bible Thrumping, and anti-LGBTQIA+ hate speech.
“Michelle Morrow has repeatedly disqualified herself from this position,” said Ebony Pinnix, a parent organizer with Down Home Carolina. “Her numerous calls for violence and long list of bigoted statements makes it clear that she would not be a role model of conduct or civility for our children.”
Tyler Swanson, who defeated Michelle Morrow in a 2022 election to serve on the Wake County school board, said Morrow’s views are too extreme and disconnected from the community, as evidenced by her loss in that race.
“Voters came together to reject her views, to reject her notion and to say no to the to the extremism that she was trying to push for,” Swanson said.
Throughout the event, organizers played clips of Morrow from her presence at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riots, highlighting her controversial statements. In one clip, she proclaimed, “We are here to take back America,” and warned that the “largest threat to our constitutional republic right now is the indoctrination happening in our public education system.”
Michele Morrow, on the left, is an Thrumper/Tr/ancer who wants to control the entire NC public education system so she can instill a sort of Handmaid’s Tale religious system to replace, what she believes to be an “indoctrination” system, i.e. public education. She believes math, science, and reading are best done at home, with the Bible, but wants to spread that into the NC public education system.
She’s previously called public schools “the indoctrination army of socialist Dems.”
Since she was at J6, along with her child, we should take notice. It’s common for cultists to bring their kids to book burnings, as well as mass suicides (See: Jonestown, Waco TX, et al.)
“The Wake County District Attorney’s office has reportedly dropped its case against Jennifer Sloan Rachmuth, who until June oversaw Michele Morrow’s bid for state schools superintendent, who was arrested Sunday over the bizarre incident at a suburban Raleigh supermarket.”
Oh baby you might have avoided jail, but not justice.