Nicholas Brown, a junior at Jordan High School in Durham, has had the uncomfortable experience of being followed to class by School Resource Officers hired by the district who are supposed to make students and staff feel safe. Brown, 16, wasn’t doing anything wrong, just moving from one class to another to attend a study session or to take a teacher-approved restroom break.
...State education officials will help place students in other schools for 2021-22 academic year A tardy audit submission in late December couldn’t save Essie Mae Kiser Foxx Charter School. The State Board of Education on Thursday unanimously voted to revoke the Rowan County school’s charter because its leaders failed to submit required financial audits for 2019 and 2020 on time.
...The pandemic only added to the enormous challenges confronting NC public schools It’s been called a year like no other. And 2020 has been that, especially for teachers and parents struggling to educate school children during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people across the United States.
...WASHINGTON—In four years in office, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos failed to broaden her appeal beyond the moment she won a wild Senate confirmation fight by the closest of margins. She didn’t even try. Instead, the billionaire Michigan native and Republican megadonor championed private and charter schools, often trying to funnel federal funding toward them. Her full-throated support outraged Democrats in Congress, riled the nation’s powerful teachers unions and never registered as a major priority for the Trump administration.
Read more 0With UNC System schools looking ahead to the spring semester, tensions over COVID-19 planning and the question of returning more students to campus have have intensified between students, staff, faculty and administrators. While most of the system’s 17 universities kept students on campus for the fall semester, the largest schools — N.C. State University, UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina University — sent students home after just a week of classes.
...With clusters of campus COVID cases, the fall semester was a failure. In the spring, history could repeat itself. Faculty members and administrators in the UNC System are butting heads over pandemic planning for the spring semester, as some schools consider bringing more students back to campuses.
...Data show that more than half of public school children are nonwhite, but only 21% of teachers are.
As a young boy growing up in Kinston, Anthony Graham, saw well intentioned Samaritans flow into Eastern North Carolina after strong hurricanes battered the coast and inland regions. For a brief time, Graham said, they provided an invaluable and welcomed safety net for people in his community, some of whom had lost everything in the destructive storms. ...Nearly a third of all North Carolina households lack high-speed internet, essentially cutting them off from crucial education and health care services, according to a recent report by the Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental, and Health Equity Task Force. Most of these areas are rural and often in communities of color.
...The charter, which opened in 2018, has serious financial, management and academic problems.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, the families that entrust their children to Essie Mae Kiser Foxx Charter School school in East Spencer, a small town of about 1,500 in Rowan County, were urged to “enjoy" their holiday break on the school’s Facebook page.
...Last week the American Medical Association made international headlines by declaring racism an “urgent public health threat,” warning that it perpetuates health inequities and calling for systematic change to combat it. “The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer,” said Dr. Willarda V. Edwards, an AMA board member, in a public statement.“Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation,” Edwards said.
...Granville is a cautionary tale for rural school districts that must compete with charters
Granville County Schools is in what former school board member Rob Rivers describes as a graveyard spiral.
As evidence, the former NASA test pilot points to budget problems, declining enrollment and worsening academic performance, all of which Rivers believes will doom the district if steps aren’t taken to stop the free fall.
...Recent rejection of proposed Wake charter reveals a system that can get messy, contentious and personal Kashi Bazemore’s dream of leading a charter school in Bertie County came true in 2014 when she became principal of Heritage Collegiate Leadership Academy (HCLA), a small school in Windsor that she helped start.
...Schools in Wayne County were already struggling before COVID-19 When Wayne County Public Schools reopened in August for a mix of in-person instruction and remote learning, Fran Smith, an officer in the local branch of the NAACP, began to receive daily calls from teachers worried about their safety.
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