Our education system should be the number one priority for our lawmakers when they create their budgets, just as our children are the number one priority in our families. Year after year, our lawmakers have made cuts at both the local and state level. North Carolina was once a leader in public education, but now we are last in funding. Our elected officials must comply with North Carolina’s Supreme Court Leandro order and release over $700 million ensuring that every child gets a high-quality primary education. Those funds should provide universal pre-K, refurbish outdated buildings, build new school infrastructure, and raise teacher pay to attract the best educators.

Public tax dollars should be invested in public education, not private schools.  Some North Carolina lawmakers have been hell-bent on defunding our schools through school voucher programs.  In 2023, $5 billion was taken from public education for the voucher program and family income limits were removed. In other words, now wealthy families can receive vouchers to send their children to well-funded private schools, while most of us send our children to schools that are being stripped of their funding. We oppose any attempts to privatize education or to use public tax dollars for private schools. 

Our schools must support all students regardless of race, ethnicity, economic background, regional location, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or immigration status. We believe that how parents raise their children is a private decision and that the government has no role in deciding how our children express themselves. 

We support a public school curriculum that tells our history honestly and accurately and that parents should have full insight into what their children are learning. Our libraries and classrooms are at their best when they contain diverse and exploratory information and no political or religious agenda should determine what our children are free to learn. 

Our public schools should help ensure that all our students receive an education that feeds their minds and bodies. Since 2022, free lunch is no longer available for all students.  We support increasing funding for health and nutrition programs to ensure that all students receive healthy meals while they learn. We also support increased funding for improved mental health programs and counseling services. In many of our communities, only one counselor serves multiple schools. We must have professional staff in our schools to recognize and support students in need. 

When children go to school, they should be in a safe environment to learn and not have to worry about violence. We support policies that ensure that professionals in our schools are equipped to handle minor events with sensible responses and that do not treat our students as criminals. Our lawmakers should pass common sense gun laws that support everyone's Second Amendment rights while also ensuring that people who should not have access to weapons will not be threats to our children and our schools.

Due to aging infrastructure and a lack of investment, our school buildings are in disrepair and sometimes even dangerous for our children’s health. With new funds available through the Inflation Reduction Act, our local governments should update our school infrastructure to create a healthier learning environment and use the opportunity to invest in climate resiliency. 

While going directly into the workforce is the right choice for many, we should have a higher education system accessible to everyone. Whether we want to get a college degree or certification for a trade, this opportunity should be affordable or free. Our state must invest in and further support our community college system so that students can continue their education without going into thousands of dollars of debt.