While the attention of most North Carolina parents and educators remains focused on getting children back inside classrooms as safely and quickly as possible, the General Assembly is, unfortunately, trying to push through yet another expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship school voucher program.
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In his response to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s recent State of the State address, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said we have former President Donald Trump to thank for the rapid deployment and distribution of vaccines that are saving us from the pandemic. Although it seems appalling to give credit to the 45th president, whose reckless disregard for human life was evident throughout his presidency, Gazelka isn’t wrong exactly.
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Last week, Virginia became the first southern state to abolish the death penalty. At the signing ceremony, Gov. Ralph Northam and other speakers repeatedly referenced the racist history of the Virginia death penalty as a prime reason for its abolition. It is not a coincidence that Virginia, the birthplace of American slavery and the capital of the Confederacy, has been at the forefront of the American death penalty.
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Visibility within the transgender community is often a Catch-22, especially for trans people of color, or those living in rural, conservative areas. Hiding one’s identity can be a damaging experience and increase feelings of isolation, stigma and shame. But standing out as a trans person can make someone a target for discrimination or violence.
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With Republican lawmakers throughout the land making “election integrity” a favorite cause and rallying cry, it likely was just a matter of time before some of their North Carolina counterparts got on board. Lo and behold, along came the sterling piece of legislative statesmanship known as Senate Bill 326, filed on March 18 and entitled the "Election Integrity Act."
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News item: Yesterday, the state defendants in the long running Leandro school finance case submitted a comprehensive plan to Judge David Lee that details how North Carolina proposes, at long last, to comply with the state Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling that every student in the state has a constitutional right to a “sound basic education.”
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RALEIGH – It was 209 years ago this month that “gerrymandering” was coined, and our nation has paid the price ever since. In 1812, Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry soiled his reputation by approving a ploy to redraw the state’s voting districts to unfairly favor his party in that year’s election.
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Perhaps it’s the pandemic that offers a fitting analogy to the condition of our politics as Americans try to recover from the trauma of Jan. 6 – when we came dangerously close to the onset of an anti-democratic Trump-ocracy. The loss of more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, their lives snuffed out by COVID-19, has been a cataclysmic shock to the nation, an epic of sorrow and suffering.
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Those who had high hopes for a serious minimum wage proposal from the Republican Party will be disappointed: The recent proposal released by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would not even increase the minimum wage to 1960s levels, after adjusting for inflation. It is a meager increase that fails to address the problem of low pay in the U.S. economy.
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When the State places its noose around a white woman’s neck, the world cries foul. On January 13, Lisa Montgomery, a white woman, was led to the death chamber. The federal government used its weapon of choice, lethal injection, to kill her. She was the first woman executed by the federal government in 68 years. Widely condemned, her execution was seen as a tragic killing of a victim of horrific sexual and physical abuse.
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As state legislatures have started their sessions, anti-public school legislators have wasted no time introducing “school choice” bills that would divert public funds to privatization schemes. In the first three weeks of January alone, 34 bills to expand private education options had been introduced in 15 states.
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The cruel reality of solitary confinement ought to shock all caring and thinking people One night in January of 2014, two prison guards at the Colorado State Penitentiary walked a man in handcuffs and an inmate’s uniform down the prison hallway and deposited him in a solitary cell designated "R.F.P. Ad. Seg.: Administrative Segregation, Removed from Population. Solitary confinement."
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Teacher burnout was already a big problem prior to COVID, and without policy changes, it's about to get a lot worse Public school educators in North Carolina continue to manage the immediate needs of students under shifting instructional conditions and an uncertain future as the debate around in-person and remote schooling dominates policy discussions.
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Unless we acknowledge and address the racist history of school choice, we will perpetuate it.
It's National School Choice Week. Following a year of reinvigorated examination of the history and current role of racial oppression in American institutions, like policing and elections, this week provides all parents, educators, administrators and advocates a worthwhile opportunity to likewise reflect upon the historical role of race and racism in the school choice movement.
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COVID taught us a lot about living in crisis mode. The biggest lesson: address crises early enough to avoid complete disruption of our lives. Let’s start with the climate crisis. If we cannot slow climate change before certain tipping points are reached, changes will accelerate of their own accord and disastrous consequences will mount. There will be worse weather extremes, food shortages, mass migrations of people escaping rising seas and extinction of an estimated one-third of all species by 2050.
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