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The more state legislators avert their eyes and ears and pretend not to notice, the more that North Carolina public education experts continue to issue new and urgent pleas to adequately fund our public schools.

Two of the most important voices weighed in with new entreaties in just the last few days.

Both the Public School Forum of North Carolina and the state Board of Education released short and to-the-point lists of priorities for the 2025 General Assembly. Their requests:

Fund schools adequately and equitably
Dramatically improve the state’s near lowest-in-the-nation teacher pay
Rebuild crumbling school facilities
Address the crisis in student mental health and wellbeing
Modernize the state’s system for assessing schools, and
Demand accountability from taxpayer subsidized private schools.

The bottom line: GOP state legislative leaders are willfully and destructively starving our public schools even as they heap mounds of cash on unaccountable private voucher schools. It’s essential that they reverse course before the damage becomes irreversible.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.