#north carolina superintendent of public instruction

[tomorrowusa]

North Carolina seems to be the vortex for MAGA extremism this year.

We thought that the GOP candidate for governor Mark Robinson was off the scale.

Meet North Carolina’s GOP Governor Candidate: A Hitler-Quoting Extremist

But Michele Morrow, the GOP nominee for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, makes Mark Robinson sound almost mainstream.

In other comments on social media between 2019 and 2021 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Morrow made disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates. “I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” she wrote in a tweet from May 2020, responding to a user sharing a conspiracy theory who suggested sending Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.” In another post in May 2020, she responded to a fake Time Magazine cover that featured art of Obama in an electric chair asking if he should be executed. “Death to ALL traitors!!” Morrow responded. In yet another comment, Morrow suggested in December 2020 killing Biden, who at that time was president-elect, and has said he would ask Americans to wear a mask for 100 days. “Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” she wrote. CNN reached out to Morrow and her campaign multiple times but did not receive a response.

But wait, there's more!

Morrow also promoted QAnon slogans and tweeted that the actor Jim Carrey was “… likely searching for adrenochrome” – a reference to a conspiracy theory shared by QAnon believers that celebrities harvest and drink the blood of children to prolong their own lives. Media Matters, a left-leaning publication, was first to report the QAnon tweets. All together, Morrow tweeted “WWG1WGA” – the slogan that stands for “where we go one, we go all” and is commonly associated with the QAnon conspiracy – more than seven times in 2020. Central to QAnon lore is the notion of the “Storm,” a belief there will be a day when thousands will purportedly be arrested, subjected to military tribunals, and face mass executions for their alleged crimes, with Donald Trump leading efforts to dismantle them alongside other QAnon “patriots.”

Morrow seems to get off on executions a lot. Her addiction to QAnon (who hasn't been around for years) is not at all out of character.

Sadly, such Republican candidates are hardly unusual these days.

To defeat such MAGA fascist extremist psychopaths it will be necessary to become more politically active in real life this year. That means volunteering, donating, and being more visible as pro-democracy Americans. And not just in North Carolina but nationwide.

My new favorite slogan this year is a classic rallying cry from civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson:

Nobody will save us from us but us.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden.

In other comments on social media between 2019 and 2021 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Morrow made disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.

“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” she wrote in a tweet from May 2020, responding to a user sharing a conspiracy theory who suggested sending Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

In another post in May 2020, she responded to a fake Time Magazine cover that featured art of Obama in an electric chair asking if he should be executed.

“Death to ALL traitors!!” Morrow responded.

In yet another comment, Morrow suggested in December 2020 killing Biden, who at that time was president-elect, and has said he would ask Americans to wear a mask for 100 days.

“Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” she wrote.”

😡

[antidrumpfs]

GOP nominee to run North Carolina schools once called for Obama’s execution

The Republican nominee for superintendent overseeing North Carolina’s public schools and its $11 billion budget has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats. Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden. CNN's Andrew Kaczynski has the story.

[lboogie1906]

James D. Lynch (1839 – December 18, 1872) was a missionary, public official, and state legislator. He was the first African American secretary of State of Mississippi and a minister. He was born in Baltimore. His mother was a slave and his father was a white merchant and minister. He obtained his early education at an elementary school instructed by Reverend Daniel Payne of the AME Church. He attended Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire and then moved to Indianapolis where he committed himself to ministry. He preached in the town of Galena, Illinois. He was appointed a "Missionary and Government Superintendent" at Beaufort, South Carolina. He helped to establish churches and schools in South Carolina and Georgia for African American children and adults. He moved to Mississippi as an official of the Methodist Episcopal Church North. The church increased by six thousand African Americans, and twenty meeting houses were created. He realized that the political rights of the freedmen were just as important as their religious faith. He and others organized the Republican Party in Mississippi, where they held the first party convention. He was elected VP of the organization because of his prior services. He then worked to create a new constitution for Mississippi, where he took a moderate stance. He campaigned to secure voter support for a constitutional convention, in addition to verifying the election of Republican delegates. He became involved with the newspaper business and became a publisher and editor of his publication called Jackson Colored Citizen. He worked to improve the public school system throughout the state and acquired support from whites. He was re-elected. He served as a delegate to the RNC. He and his African American supporters started to become disillusioned with the Reconstruction process, along with the increasing tension amongst the African American and European-American Republicans. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/CmTuuNqO7JM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[pashterlengkap]

GOP candidate whines that her calls for Biden’s & Obama’s executions were “taken out of context”

Michele Morrow won the GOP primary for North Carolina superintendent of public instruction earlier this month, and she’s now facing scrutiny for her calls to kill prominent Democrats, as well as for her support for the outlandish QAnon conspiracy theory. Her defense? She was just joking, and her words were taken out of context. Related: Elon Musk pushes anti-gay #Pizzagate conspiracy theory as advertisers flee X He just can’t stop endorsing far-right misinformation, even as his platform loses millions in ad revenue. “The dysfunctional media is trying to create ‘gotcha moments’ out of old comments taken out of context, made in jest, or never made in the first place,” she posted on X, sharing a video of her trying to explain away her extreme statements. Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Daily * Weekly * Good News * Those “gotcha moments” include a 2020 Twitter post, in which she said she wanted “a Pay Per View of [former President Barack Obama] in front of the firing squad.” “We could make some money back from televising his death,” she wrote. “Death to ALL traitors!!” she wrote in another tweet in response to a picture of Obama in an electric chair. In a December 2020 tweet, she called for the death of then-President-elect Joe Biden when he asked people to wear masks during the early months of COVID-19. “Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” she wrote. In addition to calling for the deaths of Obama and Biden, in 2019 she called for the death of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – who is Black and Muslim – for “treason.” Omar “and her other law-hating Dems must be getting a little nervous. Are they just realizing the punishment for treason is death?!?” she wrote. Morrow also wrote about North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) responses to COVID-19 in 2020 and used the hashtags #PrisonTimeforFederalCrime and #DeathToTraitors. She even once attacked actor Jim Carrey, saying he was “likely searching for adrenochrome.” The QAnon conspiracy theory says that there is a secret, international cabal of Satanic pedophiles made up of powerful Democratic and Hollywood figures that Donald Trump is secretly fighting to dismantle. In some versions of the conspiracy theory, the cabal is harvesting adrenochrome, a psychoactive drug that they claim is taken from tortured and murdered children after they are sacrificed to Satan. But now Morrow is focused on calling Democrats “radical.” “I’m facing the most radical extremist the Democrats have ever run for superintendent in the history of North Carolina,” she claimed in the video intended to respond to her social posts getting attention in the media. “My opponent spent six years leading a progressive organization that funded efforts to destroy families, public schools, and everyone’s safety in this state,” she continued. Her opponent, Democrat Mo Green, has served as the executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a North Carolina nonprofit that gives millions of dollars a year to smaller organizations in the state that work on issues like affordable housing, education, and the environment. The dysfunctional media is trying to create "gotcha moments" out of old comments taken out of context, made in jest, or never made in the first place. They're doing it to hide the radicalism of the Democrat platform. It won't work. https://t.co/AOeM7HRHru pic.twitter.com/eAfV2ZU3vQ— MicheleMorrow (@MicheleMorrowNC) March 24, 2024 Morrow’s language around “gotcha moments” echoes her confrontation with CNN correspondent Shimon Prokupecz last week. Prokupecz confronted her about her past statements, and she at first tried to avoid responding before she started berating him about “gotcha moments.” “Everyone is so… http://dlvr.it/T4dvzW

[reportwire]

Plan aids NC principals otherwise penalized for pay change

Plan aids NC principals otherwise penalized for pay change

2022-08-24 23:20:56 RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s schools chief unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would prevent some public school principals from facing pay cuts in 2023 due to an alteration in how performance-based compensation is calculated. Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt said about $4.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds for education would be spent to…

[thewarrenist]

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction announced today that more than two dozen school districts across North Carolina will share nearly $400 million in new state lottery-funded grant awards. Of that amount, Warren County Schools will receive $24 million. Read more and a statement from Warren County Schools Superintendent Keith Sutton on Warrenist.com! #Warrenist #WarrenCountyNC #WarrenCountySchools #PublicEducation #NCpubliceducation #NCeducation #NCSchools #NCDPI #NCnews #NCblog #TheWarrenist #252news #KeithSutton (at Warren County, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdHEX9NO3Hk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[orbemnews]

Early data shows NC students slipping on standardized tests for math, science :: WRAL.com By Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter, and Keely Arthur Raleigh, N.C. — Preliminary data from the North Carolina Department of Public Education shows students scored lower on state tests for math and science this fall compared to fall 2019. About 24,000 tests, out of about 175,000 expected tests total, have yet to be completed. Students have until July 5 to take the end-of-course tests, so the department doesn’t consider the results so far to be comparable to last fall. But with 86.3% of tests administered so far, scores have been lower for Biology, Math 1 and Math 3. The test results were revealed in the State Board of Education’s agenda for this Wednesday as part of a presentation on testing and accountability updates. The state will plans to apply for a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education that would exempt the state from having to form new support plans based on this year’s testing data. With the waiver, the state would have to report certain data, including chronic absenteeism among students and student access to technology. While education has looked markedly different during the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education announced Feb. 22 it would continue to require standardized testing into the spring and would not grant states waivers of it — waivers different from what the state plans to seek, which pertains only to accountability. The department waived the standardized testing requirements last spring when schools quickly converted to remote learning shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic first arrived in the U.S. States have the option to extend testing into the fall. This year has been hard for students, said Stan Winborne, assistant superintendent for Granville County Schools. “They should be given credit for all that they’ve had to go through,” Winborne told WRAL News. Still, he said, test results can be used to help “close the gap” in student success. And with teachers getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and more students returning to the physical classroom, Winborne thinks student performance and test scores will improve. “I have a lot of confidence that our kids will come roaring back and rise to the challenge,” he said. About 54.5% of students were not proficient in biology this fall, compared to 42.1% last fall. For Math 1, 66.4% of students were not proficient this fall, compared to 48.2% last fall. For Math 3, 54.9% weren’t proficient, compared to 44.5%. Scores did not significantly change for English II test results. The shares of students testing at the highest level — Level 5 — are also down so far. For biology, 9.7% of test takers scored at Level 5, compared to 17% last fall. In Math 1, 1.2% scored at Level 5, compared to 3.3%, and for Math 3, 8.9% scored at Level 5, compared to 13.7%. Only about two-thirds of Beginning-of-Grade-3 exams have been administered so far, about 74,000 of the about 109,000 state officials expect to give. The window to administer the test ends March 12. The Department of Public Instruction says the test results here are also not comparable to last fall, because the number of tests administered within the first 20 days of the school year was more than normal. So far, 58.2% of third grade students scored at the lowest of the five levels for the test, compared to 49.8% last fall. More On This Source link Orbem News #data #DepartmentofPublicInstruction #early #Education #Math #NorthCarolinaBoardofEducation #Science #Shows #slipping #standardized #standardizedtests #Students #Tests #WRALcom

[multipleservicelisting]

13,000 School Districts, 13,000 Approaches to Teaching During Covid

Jan. 21, 2021

Leer en español

What does it mean to go to public school in the United States during the pandemic?

The answer looks so different in different parts of the country, it is hard to tell that we are one nation.

In some rural and suburban areas, especially in the South, Midwest and Great Plains, almost all students began the 2020-21 academic year attending school in person, and they have continued to do so, except for temporary closures during outbreaks.

In many cities, the bulk of students haven’t been in a classroom since March. And in some districts, like New York City, only younger students have the option of going to school in person, with many attending only part-time.

With little guidance from the federal government, the nation’s 13,000 districts have largely come up with their own standards for when it is safe to open schools and what virus mitigation measures to use. Those decisions have often been based as much on politics as on public health data.

Through all of this, there has been no official accounting of how many American students are attending school in person or virtually. We don’t know precisely how many remote students are not receiving any live instruction, or how many students have not logged into their classes all year. Nor has the federal government tracked how many coronavirus cases have been identified in schools or which mitigation methods districts are using.

While it is clear that many students learning remotely are falling behind, few districts have comprehensively assessed where their students are, and what skills they have and have not learned since schools across the country closed last March. As a result, we don’t know what approaches to remote instruction have worked or failed.

But some of the early data is deeply troubling. In Houston, the nation’s seventh-largest public school district, which began the year remotely, 42 percent of students received at least one F in the first grading period in the fall, compared with 26 percent in the fall of 2019.

In the Saint Paul Public Schools in Minnesota, where nearly all students have been learning remotely since the start of this school year, 32 percent of grades given in high school core courses in the first quarter were failing marks, up from 12 percent the year before.

And Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, where classes were virtual all fall, found that the percentage of middle and high school students who failed two or more classes in the first quarter increased 83 percent from the first quarter of the previous year. The increase was even greater among students with disabilities and students learning English.

The disruption of education, like so much else about the pandemic, has not affected everyone equally. Districts serving high percentages of nonwhite or poor students were significantly more likely to remain fully remote this fall than other districts.

For many of the students who have not set foot in school since March, in-person education also represents a critical safety net — a source of food and other basic necessities, a place with caring adults who will notice signs of abuse or neglect — from which they are now cut off.

And the limited data from assessments and grades this fall suggest that disadvantaged students have lost the most ground during months of remote learning.

“Lower-income kids, kids of color, kids with unique needs like those who have a disability or other challenges — the numbers look very, very bad,” said Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research and policy organization based at the University of Washington Bothell.

Students are not suffering just academically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that the proportion of mental-health-related visits among all visits to emergency rooms by children 5 to 17 years old increased significantly from April to October, compared with those months in 2019.

To give readers a sense of the varying ways the pandemic has affected students, families, teachers and school staff, The New York Times has profiled seven districts across the country, looking at how each responded in differing ways to the challenges of educating children in the pandemic.

Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, has operated remotely all fall, citing the city’s high rate of virus transmission. With cases still very high and hospitals overwhelmed, it seems unlikely that the district, where most students are Latino, will return to in-person learning anytime soon.

Cherokee County, Ga., a mostly white suburban district, offered in-person instruction all fall, though several of its schools switched to remote learning temporarily because of outbreaks, and the entire district was closed for at least two weeks following winter break as staffing shortages mounted. Wausau, Wis., a small, majority-white district in a state that found itself one of the worst virus hot spots for a period in the fall, vacillated between in-person and remote instruction.

In the District of Columbia Public Schools, a majority Black district, we followed efforts to re-engage students during a semester of all-remote instruction. In Providence, R.I., the governor’s push for schools to open allowed its mostly Hispanic students to come back to class, unlike in other Northeastern cities, even as the state experienced a dangerous new surge.

Roosevelt Independent School District, a tiny, rural, mostly Latino district in West Texas, made the fraught decision to require all students to return to school in person to combat a wave of academic failures. Edison, N.J., a large suburban district where a majority of the students are Asian, has struggled to make hybrid education work.

Although education experts still have only a cloudy understanding of the impact of the coronavirus on learning, they have gained some clarity about the conditions under which schools can open safely.

Evidence has increased that schools, particularly elementary schools, are unlikely to seed transmission when community spread is at moderate or low levels — provided they use mitigation strategies, including mask requirements, social distancing and good ventilation.

But in places where the virus has surged, officials say they have seen more transmission in schools, especially in higher grades. High school sports have been a particular source of infections, leading some states to suspend them, outraging many parents.

The increasing evidence that some schools could operate safely was good news for districts where students were faltering under remote learning. Unfortunately, it emerged just as a new wave of infections picked up and then quickly engulfed the country late last year and into the new one.

Many superintendents have watched the rising cases with anguish, as they saw their hopes of bringing more students back to school in the near future threatened.

“It doesn’t feel good to know that children need you — children that you dedicated your life to absolutely need you — and you can’t be there for them in the ways you normally could and would,” said Sharon L. Contreras, the superintendent of Guilford County Schools, North Carolina’s third-largest district.

As we enter 2021, vaccines are likely to change the picture — but more slowly than Dr. Contreras and many educators, parents and children would want.

Although many states are prioritizing educators for the vaccine, it will take months for all teachers to be fully vaccinated — leaving aside those who decline — and most children will likely not be vaccinated until fall at the earliest.

At the same time, a new variant of the coronavirus that is thought to be more contagious is spreading in the United States, complicating efforts to reopen classrooms.

All this means that many schools will likely continue to require masks and social distancing well into the 2021-22 school year. And while few districts have said so explicitly, many students may not see teachers or classmates in person until the fall.

Opening photographs, clockwise from top left: Victor J. Blue for The New York Times, Philip Keith for The New York Times, Christopher Lee for The New York Times

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[pashterlengkap]

LGBTQ+ groups band together to challenge school district over Don’t Say Gay policies

Three LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in western North Carolina have fired an opening salvo in their effort to overturn the state’s discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law. The Campaign for Southern Equality, Youth OUTright WNC, and PFLAG Asheville have joined forces to challenge the Buncombe County School District (near Asheville) over SB49, enacted in August after North Carolina Republicans overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. Related: Gay student rips into hate group co-founder to her face: “You deserve to be fired” Zander Moricz didn’t mince words when telling anti-LGBTQ+ school board member Bridget Ziegler she’s “terrible” at her job. The Don’t Say Gay legislation, also known as the Parent’s Bill of Rights, bans instruction on “gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade and requires parents to be notified “prior to any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student in school records or by school personnel,” with some discretion accorded to school administrators. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Promotions (occasional) * Week in Good News (one on the Weekend) * Week in Review (one on the Weekend) * Daily Brief (one each weekday) * Sign Up The law went into effect immediately with its passage, and in the months since, school districts across the state have been grappling with how to implement it. In a complaint addressed to the Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools, the three groups allege SB49 violates the education provisions of Title IX. “The policies passed by the Buncombe County Board of Education to comply with the state law SB49 (alternately called the ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ law and the ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’) create a hostile educational environment for LGBTQIA+ students, families, staff and faculty,” the complainants write, “and in doing so violate Title IX and Buncombe County Schools’ obligation to provide every student with a safe and non-discriminatory school environment.” The complaint cites Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding, which includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In October, the Campaign for Southern Equality addressed their allegations over Title IX to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which responded, “Absent a determination by USED Office of Civil Rights or a court order affirming your position, neither the State Board nor DPI can knowingly fail to comply with a duly enacted state law.” The groups’ strategy then moved to obtain just such a determination from a local official entrusted with enforcing Title IX. In Buncombe County, that responsibility falls to Shanon Martin, Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools. “We request that, should these allegations of a Title IX violation be confirmed, the Buncombe County Schools Title IX Coordinator instruct the Superintendent to delay all implementation of the SB49-related policies passed on December 7, 2023, until such time as the federal complaint against DPI and SBE has been resolved,” the complaint to Martin reads. Craig White, supportive schools director at Campaign For Southern Equality, told Blue Ridge Public Radio that his team expects to file a federal complaint in January. Rob Elliot, chairman of the policy committee for the Buncombe County Board of Education, said figuring out how to enforce SB49 has been “very stressful” and a “noisy, big, complex legal discussion.” “We don’t exist just under the confines of this one new law, Elliot said. “This doesn’t define our entire world. We exist under a whole universe of federal law and state law, all of which we have to abide by as well.” http://dlvr.it/T0ZHBZ

[full-imagination]

Robert Howard Bryant

Robert Howard Bryant, 96, of Irmo, SC and formerly of Kings Mountain, NC, died peacefully after a brief illness, Saturday, October 3, 2020. Born August 11, 1924 in Spartanburg County, SC, he was the son of the late Ellis K. Bryant and Fae Tucker Bryant and husband of 66 years to the late Anne Lee Foster Bryant. Mr. Bryant was a graduate of Fingerville High School, he attended Wofford College 1941-1943 before serving in the US Army, June 22, 1943 to April 9, 1946, returning to Wofford College to complete his degree in 1947. He received his Master’s Degree in education from Furman University in 1953 and Education Administration Degree from Western Carolina. Mr. Bryant was a longtime public school teacher, principal, District Assistant Superintendent of Instruction for Kings Mountain City Schools, beginning his career in 1947 and retiring in 1982. He was a member of Central United Methodist Church in Kings Mountain, NC, Methodist Men, Lions Club, and The American Legion. Howard’s interest included his family, church, gardening, photography and traveling with Anne. Survivors include his daughters, Mary Anne Shawver (Charles) of Irmo, SC, Lou Davis (James) of Aiken, SC and Joe Ellen Barrington (John) of Shelby, NC; granddaughters, Sarah Elizabeth and Lauren Davis and Elizabeth Joy Barrington; grandsons, Joseph, Andrew, and Philip Barrington; and nephews, Scott and John Pollock. In addition to his parents and wife, he was predeceased by a sister, Rosemary Pollock and her husband Robin. Graveside services will be held 11:00 AM Saturday, October 10, 2020, in Greenlawn Memorial Gardens, 1300 Fernwood-Glendale Road, Spartanburg, SC 29307. The family requests that friends and family wear masks and keep social distancing per the Covid-19 precautions. In lieu of flowers, the family ask that memorials be made to Central United Methodist Church, 113 South Piedmont Avenue, Kings Mountain, NC 28086 or to the charity of one’s choice. Floyd’s North Church Street Chapel from The JF Floyd Mortuary via Spartanburg Funeral