Schools are eager to hire any available candidate, which will likely have a negative impact on many students in classrooms with no vacancies. That same NCSSA survey reports that the number of teachers on provisional emergency licenses has nearly doubled, increasing from 1,942 to 3,618 this year. This is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, but clearly shows that vacancies are skyrocketing.Įven in filled classrooms, not every student has access to a great teacher. As a point of reference and using data from all 115 districts, the Department of Public Instruction reported 3,800 vacancies on the first day of the 2020-21 school year, up from 1,829 in 2019-20. That’s an underestimate of the true problem, as just 98 of 115 school districts provided their data. And certainly, every parent and caregiver would agree that their child deserves a great teacher.Īpparently, however, the message hasn’t reached the North Carolina General Assembly.Īccording to data from the North Carolina School Superintendents’ Association, North Carolina’s public schools started the year with at least 4,469 teacher vacancies. In 2004, they established that staffing each classroom with a competent, well-trained teacher is vital to providing students with the “sound basic” education guaranteed under our state constitution. While there are many disagreements in education policy, nearly all researchers agree that within the school walls, there’s nothing more important than an excellent teacher. North Carolina’s teacher shortage: the inevitable result of the General Assembly’s decade-long effort to degrade the profession Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in that case late this year or early next year.Ĥ. In that pivotal case, Republican legislators are seeking to bar state courts from hearing cases concerning congressional redistricting and other matters related to elections for federal offices. The list of invoices does not include any from Cooper & Kirk, the Washington law firm representing legislators before the U.S. Thomas Farr is another partner with the firm who has represented North Carolina Republicans though several rounds of redistricting litigation since at least 2001. Phillip Strach is partner at Nelson Mullins and often takes the lead in oral arguments in North Carolina redistricting cases. The payments over those months went to two law firms, Baker & Hostetler and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. Invoices from law firms for redistricting work date from late November 2021 to July 2022, according to an accounting from the Legislative Services Office that NC Policy Watch obtained through a public records request. Here’s how much NC Republicans’ redistricting lawyers cost taxpayersĪbout $2.9 million in taxpayer money has gone to law firms Republican legislators hired to do redistricting work for them in the last round of map-drawing, work that included representing GOP leaders in redistricting lawsuits. When Wrenn denied the permit, he wrote that “noise, traffic and visual impacts” were incompatible with the public’s use and enjoyment of the park.

The decision, to approve or deny, was solely Wrenn’s. Wrenn and several other top DEMLR officials had assembled there at the behest of Reid Wilson, the secretary of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which oversees the state park system.ĭEMLR was weighing a controversial mining permit application filed by Wake Stone to expand its existing rock quarry onto 225 acres abutting the Umstead State Park boundary.

In early February of this year, Brian Wrenn, director of the state’s Division of Energy, Minerals and Land Resources – DEMLR – visited Umstead State Park, one of the premier natural areas in the Triangle. Hearing over denial of Wake Stone’s mining permit reveals fissures within DEQ

It noted that expanding Medicaid under the terms of the Affordable Care Act would, among other things: Ģ. The NC Department of Health and Human Services spelled out this undeniable fact in a succinct and compelling summary a few months back. The latest lame excuse for holding up Medicaid expansion (Commentary)įor nearly a decade, North Carolina has forgone billions of federal dollars, prevented the creation of thousands of good jobs, caused multiple rural hospitals to close, and most disturbingly, condemned thousands of uninsured people to an early death by refusing to follow the lead of 38 other states by expanding Medicaid.Īs scores of experts, advocates, public officials and average North Carolinians have repeatedly attested and evidenced in literally hundreds of reports, studies, essays, speeches, testimonies, commentaries, press conferences, polls, and heartfelt pleas, Medicaid expansion is a thoroughly obvious and urgently needed step for our state.

Another word for lame excuse