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Veteran schoolteacher: Why can’t students use preferred names like NC lawmakers do?
A bill making its way through the NC General Assembly seeks in part to make the first day of school more nerve-racking by requiring parent notification before a school staff member may address a student by any altered name. From SB 49 “Parents’ Bill of Rights” My student rosters after Day 1 are full of revisions as […]
Veteran NC teacher questions Treasurer Dale Folwell’s plan to switch state health plan administrator
According to this Raleigh News & Observer article, we’ll find out over a year from now before fall open enrollment in 2024 just what the change in health plan administration from Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC to Aetna will cost members in terms of plan benefits, coverage, access to current providers, treatment paths, etc. […]
On teaching schoolchildren about race in America: When we know better, we do better
Politicians confuse guilt with empathy. What they can learn from a 6-year-old and 1776. A few years ago when my son was learning about the Civil Rights Movement, he offered his class the recent example of the Black man at Starbucks who was arrested after trying to use the bathroom. He told me about this on […]
As he recovers, let’s hope Treasurer Folwell urges North Carolinians to work together by keeping apart
After five days of hospitalization for treatment of COVID-19, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell has, thankfully, been released from the hospital. News reports indicate that he will continue to recover from home. While all of us are grateful for the Treasurer’s recovery, I can’t help but wonder: would my 8-year-old asthmatic son survive such a […]
Sen. Phil Berger sidesteps an inconvenient truth about NC teacher pay
Despite having voted to expand the economics and personal finance curriculum in the state’s high schools, North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger fails to apply basic principles of these subjects when touting supposed accomplishments in teacher pay in his November 25 op-ed in Raleigh’s News & Observer, “Yes, Republican tax policies are working in North Carolina.”
In mock college application essay, NC teacher explains how state leaders are failing our kids
Students succeed in spite of state education policy, not because of it Students across North Carolina are working on their college applications. If I were one of them, this would be my response to a common application prompt: Common App Prompt #2 The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later […]
Pardon me if I’m skeptical of Treasurer Folwell’s motives in the current State Health Plan debate
There’s been a great deal of heat but not a lot of light in recent weeks surrounding state Treasurer Dale Folwell’s “Clear Pricing Project” for the State Health Plan (SHP) – an initiative that has led physicians and hospitals to leave the plan in droves. Here are some important truths about the issue that have not been widely reported – much less understood by many of the state employees whose lives stand to be disrupted.
N.C. teacher: Superintendent Mark Johnson “revoked” my access to Tuesday education summit
Editor's note: Kim Mackey is a social studies teacher with Wake County Public Schools. She recently wrote an open letter to State Superintendent Mark Johnson, because she says her ticket to his special event this Tuesday had been "revoked." In an email, a copy of which was shared with Policy Watch, Johnson wrote that the event was "at capacity."