State lawmakers have to find the money, but Republicans could dig in their heels The judge overseeing North Carolina’s landmark Leandro school funding case signed a consent order Tuesday calling for $427 million in additional education spending to help the state meet its constitutional obligation to provide all children with the opportunity to obtain a sound basic education.
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The Charter Schools Performance Framework Report gives insight into the academic, financial and operational performances of the state’s charter schools Each year, the Office of Charter Schools combs though thousands of documents to create a report for the State Board of Education showing whether schools are meeting performance goals.
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Respondents in NC skeptical of Trump's leadership, in-person school reopening One in 10 Latino households have someone in the home who has contracted the coronavirus. More than half of the nation’s Latino families face job loss and income due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighty-five percent of Latino parents are worried about children contracting coronavirus if and when schools reopen for in-person instruction while 77% are concerned about their children falling behind academically if they don’t return to school.
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While the largest schools within the UNC System have moved to online learning after widespread COVID-19 outbreaks, at smaller institutions, disagreements over reopening plans are fraying relations to the breaking point. Students, faculty and administrators are debating whether to go online now — and avoid the same fate as their larger counterparts — or try to make it through the semester unless the number of infections makes it impossible.
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Over the weekend East Carolina University and UNC-Charlotte became the latest UNC System schools to move their undergraduate courses online in the face of COVID-19. UNC-Charlotte says it intends to resume in-person classes Oct. 1. It is the first UNC System school to move classes online before they have actually begun.
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is being rocked by a series of COVID-19 infection clusters just one week after the start of classes. Four such clusters — defined by the state Department of Health and Human Services as five or more infections in a related area — have been identified in student housing since Friday.
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The state’s two virtual charter schools should be shining examples of remote learning. But instead of basking in the glow of high demand, the schools are facing tough questions about their students’ academic performances. For the fourth consecutive year, NC Cyber Academy and NC Virtual Academy both have performance ratings of "D," said David Stegall, deputy state superintendent of innovation at a Charter School Advisory Board meeting this week. “It does concern me that they are not high-performing charter schools,” he said.
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Last year, after four consecutive years of poor academic performance, state lawmakers rewarded North Carolina’s virtual charter school pilot program with an extension that allows its two schools to operate through the 2022-23 school year. The pilot program created in 2015 was supposed to end after the 2018-19 school year. But lawmakers apparently saw something promising in N.C. Cyber Academy (NCCA) and N.C. Virtual Academy (NCVA) not reflected in their academic performances.
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Chancellor's failure to share health department reopening recommendations called a "breach of trust" The Orange County Health Director has urged the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to move to online education for the fall semester and keep on-campus housing to an absolute minimum as the COVID-19 pandemic in the county worsens. The campus will be doing neither of those things, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said Wednesday.
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Enrollment drops. Employee furloughs and layoffs. Faculty cuts. Shuttered athletic programs. UNC System schools could see all of these things, according to a new report on campus plans to deal with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. And experts say this could be just the beginning.
...Millions of children will begin the new school year learning from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pivot to remote learning for U.S. schools has exposed a troubling digital divide between children from low-income families, mostly Black and Latinx students, and their peers from wealthier zip codes. > ...
On July 16, the Onslow County Board of Education weighed one of the biggest decisions it had ever faced. Should it bring nearly 27,000 students back to 39 school buildings for in-person instruction in the middle of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that’s killed more than 1,800 people in North Carolina? ...
At least 50 North Carolina charter schools took money from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), created to help small businesses and nonprofits stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because some charter schools also received COVID-19 relief money through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, critics have accused them of inappropriate “double-dipping.”
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The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked the finances of millions of Americans: Record unemployment, the widespread closure of major companies and small businesses, and for those who have been hospitalized with the virus, medical bills. But of all the ways the virus has upended our lives, the state lottery has remained unscathed.
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The UNC System is preparing for possible budget cuts of up to 50% at its 17 campuses, according to an email obtained by Policy Watch this week. The email, from UNC Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey to the system’s chancellors, cites the potential impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility that campuses may again close after reopening next month.
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Cases of anxiety and depression are spiking among young teens feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, says Charlene Wong, an associate professor of pediatrics at Duke School of Medicine. Pediatricians across the nation and throughout the world report rising cases of adolescents suffering from anxiety and depression due to pandemic–related stress and uncertainty, said Wong, who specializes in adolescent and young adult care.
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