Today the House Oversight Committee is returning to Raleigh in an environment where the Majority has returned no budget, despite their constitutional duty to do so, and has repudiated the Governor’s constitutional authority to convene a special session, which he did in the hopes the General Assembly could fully fund Medicaid. No teacher raises, no Medicaid budget fixes, no budget of any kind. So, what pressing business brings the Majority to town? The Majority wants to yell at the second highest performing school district in the state for protecting its students, teaching the truth, and not openly groveling to the all-powerful legislature.
Democrats on the Committee are deeply concerned by the Majority’s manufactured crisis and its use of culture war issues to try and distract from its shocking dereliction of its constitutional duty to meet and pass a budget. The education model it attacks is one that has delivered an extremely high Grade Level Proficiency (GLP) score of 70.3%. Many rural districts in this state are, unfortunately, severely underfunded, with GLP scores in the 40s.
“It is our constitutional responsibility to educate all of North Carolina’s children, and 84 percent of them attend our public schools,” said Rep. Maria Cervania (Wake). “If after more than 15 years in power, the Majority would stop turning these schools into political targets for culture-war issues and actually fund their own under-resourced rural school districts, North Carolina would not be struggling in the bottom 10 percent of all states for education.”
“Instead of being angry when local schools try to protect our kids and teach them the truth, perhaps the Majority should follow the Leandro court order, fully fund education in North Carolina, stop starving rural school districts of funding, teachers, and capital improvements, and scrap the disastrous and bloated school voucher welfare program that shuffles money to the wealthiest members of our community,” said Rep. Eric Ager (Buncombe).