North Carolina is in the midst of multiple contentious, fascinating and incredibly important election campaigns. Everyone is familiar with the candidates for president, and even normally uninvolved voters will be familiar with the candidates for North Carolina’s governor due to Mark Robinson’s various scandals. However, if you have children in school, these races almost overshadow the most important race on your ballot: North Carolina state superintendent.
The state superintendent oversees the Department of Public Instruction, which dictates the vast majority of decisions surrounding the state’s public schools. The DPI licenses and hires teachers, decides how to allocate funds and most importantly sets the curriculum learned by preschoolers through 12th graders. In this role, the superintendent has a large role in commanding what your children learn and how they learn it. Needless to say, this is a heavy mantle to wear.
Of our two main candidates, Michele Morrow and Mo Green, Green stands out as the sensible choice. He served as the superintendent of Guilford County Schools, the third-largest school system in the state. Under his leadership, graduation rates rose almost 10 percent, anchored by increases in minority graduations. He created strategic plans, raised millions of dollars and was regarded highly by his school board, employees and community members. Green is more than worthy of this role, yet in his stead we may see someone who has called for the public execution of former president Barack Obama.
Parents, Morrow should scare you. This far-right bigot may indeed have the premier role in deciding if your child is brought up in an environment where they can thrive or where they are academically and socially stunted. Morrow attended Donald Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 preceding the insurrection. She advocates for the removal of diversity, equity and inclusion, principles incredibly important to creating an educated and intersectionality-conscious community. She claims the “+” in LGBTQ+ stands for pedophilia and called teachers groomers. She, too, thinks this election is vitally important, calling it the “American Revolution 2.0.”
In addition to owning a dangerous political ideology and advocating for violence against public figures, she is wholly unqualified to be the superintendent for North Carolina. In 2022, she ran for a school board seat in Wake County, losing by 20 percent of the vote. Morrow has no experience in education administration.
In fact, she homeschools her children, expressing low confidence in the concept of public school. Worst, she supports the Opportunity Scholarship program, which was recently allocated almost five times as much money as public schools. The Opportunity Scholarship fund is a thinly-veiled attempt to shuttle kids into private, often Christian schools which are not under the eye of the state.
Today’s U.S. political climate is filled with attacks on public education. The K-12 schooling of young Americans often sets the agenda for the rest of their lives. Besides general instruction, schools make sure students learn important life skills and interact with others both similar and different, exposing them to a number of different views and backgrounds.
As a proud product of Fairfax County Public Schools, I learned the importance of an education system truly invested in its students’ success. But with someone like Morrow at the helm, my experience would have been altered for the worse.
If you truly care about your children, you will vote for Green. While Morrow’s ineptitude, lack of qualification and harmful ideas are on their own enough to cast a vote for the other leading candidate, Green brings a capability and proven track record to one of the most important jobs in North Carolina.
