Episode 251: Policymaker Perspectives at Eggs & Issues 2025

Welcome to Education Matters presented by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. In today’s episode, we’re taking a look at Eggs & Issues 2025 where the Public School Forum presented our Top Education Issues which represent the Forum’s legislative priorities for the 2025-26 biennium. Today, we’ll hear from policymakers who took part in a discussion of the challenges and strategies presented in this year’s Top Issues.

Guests:
Leader Sydney Batch, NC Senate Democratic Leader
Mo Green, NC Superintendent of Public Instruction 
Catty Moore, NC State Board of Education Member-At-Large
Sen. Kevin Corbin, NC General Assembly

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Welcome to Education Matters, presented by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. I'm your host, Dr. Marianne Wolfe. In today's episode, we are so pleased to give you a glimpse of our annual eggs and issues. Today you will hear from elected officials and other education leaders who will be very involved in shaping our local public schools this year. Because you're all all-stars, I am going to let each of you introduce yourself. And what we'd love you to do is go ahead and talk a little bit about the policy priorities that are most on your mind. And if it's one something on your mind personally, but maybe your body that you represent is a little different, just to make sure we know which ones we're talking about, we're open to hearing both. So we would love to start with you, Katy, if that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Kathy Moore. I am a retired educator, 37 years, classroom teacher, started in Nash County, North Carolina for a couple of years. Spent the bulk of my years, 35 in Wake County, moving through from teacher through a various roles, school-based administrator, central area superintendent, deputy superintendent, and eventually superintendent, all in the same district. And now as a retired superintendent, I am providing some service as a member of the state board of education. So, you know, I guess you just can't always let things go once you become an educator and you continue to find a way to serve or or to provide voice and collaboration and that sort of thing. So I think when I think about the the work I've I've done as an educator and now as a member of the State Board of Education, and the things that are the priorities that the forum has put forth today, as an individual, I believe that the work around reforming the accountability model and our assessment work is something that can have direct impact on students immediately. And I do think that while we do have a state accountability system and we do have a state testing system, there are things that we can do that do not run afoul of existing legislation as we wait for legislation to be updated or changed that help us build a picture, a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in our schools because parents love their schools and their principals. They don't give a flip about central office for the most part, or perhaps even the state level, but they love their schools because that's where the community is. So how do we make sure that our policies and practices and supports at the state level build the capacity and the understanding of how schools can do that work and build that complete picture of what's happening in a school with the existing tools that we have in alignment with, you know, not in opposition to whatever accountability system we're using at this time.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Superintendent Green.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Great. Uh good morning. Uh certainly my honor to be here with you this morning. My name is Maurice Green. I do go by MO, and I am honored to be North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction. Um briefly background. Uh certainly have been uh blessed to do a number of different things, including being the attorney for Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, the superintendent of Guilford County Schools, the Executive Director for the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation before retiring and then uh running for this position. Um, so as I think about where we are and what we are looking to do, I want to talk a little bit about vision because that will then drive ultimately what um things that we'll focus on over the next uh few years. So the vision uh that uh we're putting forward is um something we're calling uh achieving educational excellence, which is, I believe, the successful coupling of academic achievement along with character development, and then a focus on excellence. Um I want us to all sort of lean in on this because when I talk about excellence, I'm talking about us being the very best school system, public school system in the entire country. This is where we can go in North Carolina. It's gonna take a lot of work uh for us to get there, but if we set the vision in the bar exceedingly high, we can do that. I'm sure we'll explore any number of different things, other priorities and things as we have the conversation, but be sure that it maps back when you hear it from me that that that overall vision of achieving educational excellence.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Senator Corbin.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Thank you. Well, first of all, Mary Ann, thank you for having me today. I'm very honored to be here. And uh first out of the gate, let me tell you I'm very pro-public school, okay? Uh and let me give you a little bit about my background. Um, so a few reasons for that. So very quickly, I'm the first in my family line to to uh graduate high school. So my grandfather uh was a farmer, and back in that day, uh getting enough education to do what it is you do was what they did, and so he didn't graduate high school. My father uh went through the tenth grade, uh, wound up in the military, one of the smartest men I know, uh, but did not have formal education. So I graduated high school, uh, went to Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, go Mountaineers, uh, graduated, very proud to do that. So, very quickly, how I got here. How did I get here today? Um when I graduated from App State, I ran for the school board. I was very interested in schools. I was 22 years old, and I'm 24 now, you can probably tell. I was 22 years old, and I ran, and after after my first term, the guy that was chairman didn't want the job, so I found myself at 27 being chairman of the board of education. And we had aging schools. I said we need a long-range plan. We did a 25-year plan, and uh it was about a 300, mounted up in about a $300 million plan. Now, this is a small county, this is Franklin, North Carolina uh Macon County, North Carolina. And you guys that have been out there, uh Free Bird have seen we've got all new elementary schools now, MB has a middle school, and we're just starting the last phase of what I started is a brand new high school, and I was able to get them through DPI a grant for $62 million for the for the high school. So uh I was on the school board for 20 years to make sure I saw that through. So I'm a school board guy, local school board guy. After that, served two years on the county, uh, two terms as a county commissioner. Then the opportunity came up to run for the state uh state house, and I ran for the house back in 2016, and then in 2020 the opportunity came up to run for the Senate, and I ran for that. We worked on a little thing called Medicaid expansion. You guys hear about that? So I was one of the folks, I won't say it was all me, but I was one of the people that Sydney knows that that drove that uh that ship to get that done. And we passed Medicaid expansion. 600,000 North Carolinians are insured today that weren't a year ago. Uh so feel really good about that. And so Sinterberger came to me and said, You did a great job, you're fired. You've got to move to something else. Actually, he gave me a promotion. So I got what I asked for when I got there. So now I'm chair of education policy and chair of education appropriations. So I'm very, very happy, very happy to be there. Uh, priorities, I could take a long time with this. I guess as a legislator, I have to agree with with uh Mo. We have to look at outcomes. What are your outcomes? So we want better educated children, right? We want we want positive outcomes. But from a legislator standpoint, I think there's a couple things we need to look at immediately. Uh I want to look at the funding model for how we fund schools, those uh how we send money out to the schools. We do it now where you're funding so many teachers per per student, but based on your ADM, I'm not going into a lot of detail, but that's slightly unfair to smaller or rural schools. I know we have the small schools money and the low wealth money, I get all that, but that needs to be redone. I think we need to uh do that, and it's gonna be some increased funding, I think, for especially for rural and small school systems. Um second thing is teacher pay. It's probably another question you're gonna ask, but uh so I'll leave it at that. But I'm I think we need to do some work there. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

And leader batch. Good morning.

SPEAKER_05 8:49

Good morning. It's great to see all of you. I'm Sidney Batch. I am the Senate Democratic Leader in the state senate and live in Holly Springs, so therefore I am out of Wake County. I'm also a proud public school uh graduate from all of my time. I went to Chapel Hill Carberry City Schools, and then I, of course, then went to Carolina three times. So they have all my love and all of my money. Uh and then, of course, am now a lawyer and a social worker in the job that actually pays me. In the job that does not pay me exceptionally well, and it's snack money for my children, who are both two middle schoolers. Um, I work in the Senate very closely with uh several members, and especially in the in the education space, trying to make sure that we are moving forward in a way that every single child in North Carolina actually does have that constitutional promise of a wonderful education that is uh is what I've been actually very, very grateful for. But I know that in Chapel Hill, where the amount of the tax base and what is actually added to what we do in North Carolina is very it is very different than what you have in Buckwimens, right? And so at the end of the day, uh we need to work on that. So I completely agree with accountability, but for time purposes, and I know that we'll get into this later, I think it's the weighted student funding model. We have to get out of our antiquated way of which we are educating and funding all of our school systems across the state because those areas that do not have the ability to, of course, have local supplements in order to provide what their students need is just inadequate and frankly unfair. And so I look forward to trying to move forward in a much more equitable way for every single student in North Carolina that attends a public school.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

Thank you so much for joining us. After the break, we'll continue our session from Eggs and Issues 2025. Throughout the day today, we did hear a lot of conversation about the recruitment and retention of educators. And we know we both have vacancies in our classrooms, but we also have more non-certified teachers than we've had before. I would love to hear a little bit about what each of you would recommend that we do for that. And this could be things related to compensation, but it also could be things not related to compensation. Um and leader batch, I'm gonna let you start this time.

SPEAKER_05 11:12

So what I would say is what is free would be actually just letting teachers teach and give them the respect that they deserve. Um and so that that comes along with a number of things that don't actually cost any money, which uh you know is cutting red tape, but I also would say giving teachers the flexibility that a lot of our private schools and our charter schools have to teach the way that they believe that their students need to achieve. And we don't have that. There's a lot of red tape for teachers, uh, and I think that that's one of the things that we certainly need to change. And then again, money doesn't solve all problems, but it solves most of them. So we just need to pay people to do the jobs. We pay nurses and hospitals, right? When you don't have a nurse, you have the nursing shortage, you know what they do? Locums. All of the doctors, all the nurses they come, they can price gouge, but everybody's gonna pay that nurse because they need that coverage. We have a health care shortage in North Carolina. So while we are talking about the health care shortage, we should also talk about making sure that teachers in the profession and all of the individuals that work within our system in our school system are actually paid the rate that they are, because public schools don't have the ability to go ahead and have a locums work. Yeah, we have long-term subs that don't get paid. But if we were actually paying teachers what they deserve and giving them the respect that they need, we would not see the attrition rates that we currently have in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Thank you. Senator Corbin, I promised I'd let you talk more about this. So is this the teacher pay?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

It is. Okay, I got you. So I I had a conversation with Dr. Jim Beeler. Uh he's at Appalachian State University. A lot of you know him, he's over the gear up and other programs. And he and I were talking about the pipeline of teachers and what it takes to get that up. And I think one thing you have to do is is create something more favorable at the end of the pipeline so they want to get in it. That's why teacher pay and benefits and all those things are important because that's it's at the end of the pipeline. So when you talk about teacher pay, I know the advanced teaching roles, uh back those of you who aren't familiar with that, that was started actually when I first got here back in 2016. I was in the house, but we started the advanced teaching roles. If you're not familiar with that, the old model, which is a hundred years old, is basically the school that has a principal and a bunch of teachers. And but the thing in industry, you you don't have that kind of model. You have you have the CEO of the company, then you have some managers here that help the people do their jobs, and that's kind of what that is, that advanced teaching roles are things like lead teachers, you've heard that term. Um so that was started in 2016. It was we permanently put it in the budget, in it was a pilot, and we put it permanently in budget. I believe that was 2020. Am I right, Sydney? So 2020, and that's $3.5 million uh recurring that's in the budget. And that's something that's working really well from everything I'm hearing. So when you have something that's working well, then you didn't need to do more of it. So I think what we need to do is fund that more. If you look at the pay, it varies a lot across the state. So why is that? Why wouldn't a teacher in in Graham County make as much as Mecklenburg? Because those counties pay supplements, local supplements. You don't see that, teachers don't see that in the check. They they just get a check. But where that money comes from, part of that money is a local supplement. So I've got counties in my district, very rural. I mentioned Graham County for a reason. Graham County pays zero supplement, none, no local supplement. So what we did two is either two or four years ago, we started the um state supplement program. So for all the smaller and more rural school systems, which wound up being about 90 of them, um, we're paying substantial supplements like local governments do, but we do it all across the state. And those supplements range anywhere from, I'm thinking my district, I know my home county of Macon County is a little more uh higher wealth and not wealthy, certainly not wealthy, but uh I think our our teachers get $2,300, $2,400 a year bonus uh or supplement from the state. Graham County, which you mentioned a minute ago, they get $5,000. So that has significantly increased pay, at least in my district. And I know for a lot of you that that you've seen that you may not have seen that specifically in your check because it's not broken down, but that goes into to what makes your total income. So we can I think we need to increase that. That's been a very good program. It helps local governments that can't afford to do those supplements uh retain and and attract uh people into the teaching profession.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

And now I'd love to turn to thinking about children and what they need. And we've heard a lot about mental health concerns, also overall well-being has come up today from many people. So I'd love Superintendent Green and Ms. Moore, if you could both share a little bit about what you think the biggest needs are, and if you have specific ideas and how you'd like to address them. And if they're related to the legislature, that's okay, but it's okay if they're not too. So go ahead, Mo.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Great, thank you. Uh, I'm gonna start with just reading some numbers. Um school social workers, um, their association would say that there should be one to every 250. We're at one to about nine hundred and sixty-nine. School psychologists, um, the recommended number is one to every 500. We're at one to eighteen fifty-five. Um, yeah, so I could go on with nurses and I could go on with school counselors as well. Yeah, so this is an issue where if we're really going to focus on the mental health of our students, we have to have the professionals working with our students to provide them the supports that they need. And you can you could certainly quibble with uh what the associations would say those numbers ought to be. But you must appreciate that we're so far away from those numbers that we have got to make progress on that. And that again is money. Now, um I want us to, you know, so here's the thing that we always I think uh are challenged with. Policymakers will um oftentimes say, well, there's no more resources or there's limited resources. And absolutely the case that there is a limitation on resources, but we if we are going to live into what our constitution uh requires, which is for us to fund a general and free public education system, then the policy decisions that we must make must be ones that actually lift up uh and support our public school system. And so that means that there has to be uh additional resources that go into our public schools that go into things like in this instance supporting uh mental health professionals across our our state.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

I agree. And I think um an a sort of another dimension on this really, in addition to having the funding and the positions allocated, is finding those people. Um I think a couple of years ago perhaps the legislature funded wanted to uh uh assure that that we had like one psychologist or in every single school district in the state, and we had districts that struggled with finding a person to take on that role, even though it was funded. So I think that kind of circles back to pay, compensation, and leadership in a building and community. So I think in addition to looking at what are our expectations and funding those expectations, and that's I got a little deja vu right there, because I think I I sat on the stage a few years ago and said we need to fund what we expect. So I'll say it again, we need to fund what we expect. If our teachers and all of our staff in schools were free from some of the burdens that that they had that are administrative, quite frankly, in some cases, around how they exercise their duties and responsibilities, the ability to connect with students and and know who they are, and for all of us to exercise our role in schools as sort of first responders to the kids that are in our care every day becomes more accessible when you're not overwhelmed with all the other things that you have to do as the adults in the building.

unknown 19:58

Ms.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Moore, I'm gonna let you start, but this is a sprint round as we call it at the forum, and we're gonna say what gives you hope.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

So I'll just say that what gives me hope really is the number of people that are in this room. And and I want to charge each of you to go out and teach one, right? Do not let what you heard and hear today, what you felt that moved you, the wonderful student speakers and school practitioners who said things far better than any of us can say, them who are in the front lines every day, go out and tell it. And go out and tell it broadly. And then make sure that those folks that are in your circle understand how important our public schools are to each of our communities. They are the bedrock of an economic foundation, of a vitality, and and we need to celebrate that and support it. So go out and tell it.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yes, I agree. Um and I would say what gives me hope uh would be as I went through the campaign and met with folks from all over the state, one of the things that I would uh do is ask folks to declare that they are champions of public education. And um the response back uh to something as simple as that was uh magnificent, and I think begins to lay the groundwork for where I think we can go uh going forward, and that is that there actually are many, many champions of public education in North Carolina. Sometimes we lose focus on that uh because of some things that are in the atmosphere or folks say certain things, but there are many, many champions of public education. It's going to be up to all of us to rally ourselves and others to a charge that will uh really celebrate all. Of the wonderful things that are going on in public education and make a magnificent difference for each and every one of our children. That gives me hope.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

But what gives me hope literally is the future. I think North Carolina is such a wonderful place to live. And the statistics show that what's happening right now, folks are leaving certain states and coming to certain states. Guess what's the number? Depending on the uh the study you look look at, but what's the number three or four state in the nation that people are moving to?

SPEAKER_04 22:29

North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

North Carolina. Why? A lot of reasons. Low taxes, good environment, great place to live, good people, all the above. Great education. So that's that's the thing we need to work on is the education piece. I'm excited about uh what the future can bring, um, and I'm excited about working with uh with you guys uh for the betterment in the future of our public schools in North Carolina. So thank you for having me today, and thank you for being kind.

SPEAKER_05 22:55

Thank you. So one of the things that I would say is what gives me hope is actually a statistic that you put up earlier about 71 or 77% of all North Carolinians believe that our dollars should actually be in our public schools rather than not. I think that's a narrative that isn't actually pushed out that much, and I think that there is a groundswell of individuals who who are going to actually ask for those dollars to return to their schools. So that gives me hope. What also gives me hope is that we're in this unique position right now, at least in the Senate, again, can't speak to the House, where we are working in a bipartisan fashion. We live in a divisive world, y'all, but there are things that we can agree on, and you've heard that Kevin and I, who have worked together on multiple issues, he is now in a position to go ahead and work with our caucus to go ahead and figure out what we're gonna do with regards to our dollars, what we're gonna do with regards to accountability. And he's been a good advocate in that. And at the end of the day, as you all know, you can't get anything through this building and the legislature and the funding and the priorities we need without actually going across the aisle in many ways on both sides to talk to people. And so I what gives me hope is that we're in a unique position, I think, for the first time in a while, where we have a lot of frenetic energy around trying to actually change how we fund schools and then specifically what we do with regards to accountability in all of our schools, especially the private road schools.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

Thank you. That's a lot of hope. Um, let's give a huge round of applause for these leaders. Thank you so much to our guests and all those who tuned in for this Ex Initi News episode. That's all for today, and we'll see you next week.