Gov. Josh Stein and top Republicans in the General Assembly are seeking consensus on education issues after feuds over teacher pay and other budget issues in recent months. But education advocates are divided on whether the panel is actually needed.
Stein’s office announced the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education on Tuesday. Its goal is to assess education administration and leadership, teacher training, student advancement and school accountability.
The committee’s meeting timeline has not been announced. It is tasked with reporting findings to Stein and the General Assembly by Dec. 31.
The commission’s membership includes members of both parties. It was jointly assembled by Stein, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell). It will be co-chaired by eastern North Carolina farmer and Duke University trustee Anne Faircloth and Forsyth County Board of Commissioners Chair Don Martin. It also includes state schools Superintendent Mo Green.
Its launch comes just a day after Stein called on the Republican legislative leaders to raise teacher salaries by 5.8% on average and address other state critical needs through a $1.4 billion budget measure.
“This commission represents a bipartisan commitment and an opportunity to make North Carolina’s public schools the best in the nation,” Stein said in a statement.
He struck a conciliatory note when discussing Berger’s recent primary election as well, telling members of the media Monday that the Republican Senate leader “cares deeply about his constituents.”
“Whatever happens in [Berger’s] election is truly irrelevant to the work of the day, which is a legislature that needs to deliver the people,” Stein said. “And I know he wants to do right by his people.”
It represents a sharp change in tone from last fall, when Stein hammered Berger and Hall for failing to agree on a budget.
“Speaker Hall and Senator Berger made the time to gerrymander our state but couldn’t find the time to protect people’s health care or pass a budget that pays our teachers, law enforcement, or state employees,” he said on social media in November.
Hall and Berger, who’ve also taken plenty of rhetorical and legislative swings at Stein over the past year, expressed optimism for cooperation in their statements as well.
“It’s imperative that we continue to work collaboratively to ensure North Carolinians have the skills they need to enter the workforce,” Berger said, noting that business leaders, educators and policymakers were among those selected to serve.
“This new commission will take an honest look at what’s working and what’s not in our public schools. I look forward to collaborating with them to strengthen schools across our state,” Hall said, adding he was pleased everyone could come to “the same table” to reach these solutions.
Martin, the commission’s co-chair, said he hopes the committee can make progress on identifying the most effective instructional strategies and evaluating achievement. He pointed to the success that Mississippi has had in improving reading scores by changing their teaching methodology.
“Education, in my view, is a bipartisan issue,” said Martin, a Republican who served as a superintendent for 19 years. “Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, we want them all to be educated and their children to be successful, and certainly our state has a constitutional responsibility and has accepted that constitutional responsibility to do it.”
Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake), one of four Democratic lawmakers on the committee, hopes it will help reach consensus on raising teacher pay and addressing the high vacancy rates among educators in the state.
“The hope is, given the bipartisan representation from both the executive and legislative branch, that there will be a real effort to identify and recommend potential solutions that can strengthen public education,” he said. “Certainly, I hope that there are creative ideas that we can draw from other states on ways to focus on increasing teacher pay.”
One group that expressed skepticism about the commission was the North Carolina Association of Educators, whose president Tamika Walker Kelly said Tuesday afternoon that the biggest challenge for schools is “plainly obvious.”
“Our schools are simply not getting the resources they need to fulfill our constitutional duty to provide every child with a high-quality education. But today’s Blue Ribbon Commission ignores that reality,” Walker Kelly said. “What our state needs is a real commitment to prioritizing our kids over big corporations, not another committee.”
Stein spokeswoman Bethany Wood said in a statement that the NCAE is “correct” in its assessment of the issues. “North Carolina’s schools do not have the resources they need to provide every child with a high-quality education,” she concurred.
“If we believe that our children are our future, then we must invest in their success,” Wood said. “Governor Stein looks forward to finding ways to put this important issue front and center.”
Martin said while “the very best strategies take money to implement,” it’s still worth examining how that money should be spent and what strategies will make the most difference at the school level.
“To assume that everything we have is perfect and all we need is money is probably not helpful to improving the success of our students in this state,” he said.
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