One month out, the urgency to reach North Carolina voters is palpable at this Harris-Walz office in Wake County. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
Thirty-one days to go.
Early Saturday morning, public school advocates had already done their math homework. They knew they had just one month left to talk about the important choice before voters on Election Day.
Rep. Julie von Haefen, a past president of Wake County’s PTA and a former board member for North Carolina PTA, said it was appropriate on World Teachers’ Day to celebrate educators as the true heroes of a community.
Rep. von Haefen said it was also critical that voters support candidates who would be fierce fighters for public education. Von Haefen credits Vice President Kamala Harris with casting the deciding vote to deliver the single largest investment in public education and American history.
“And Vice President Harris didn’t stop there. Alongside President Biden, she provided $170 billion with a B in student loan debt relief to millions of borrowers, made record investments and HBCUs including right here in North Carolina, and increased the maximum Pell Grant award so that more kids can realize their dream of going to college,” said the Wake County Democrat.
On the other side of the ticket, von Haefen warned that former president Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and gut public school funding as they enacted Project 2025.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, while also lifting up some of the policy positions.
Wake County Board of Education member Tyler Swanson worries about the deep cuts public education could face under a second Trump administration and Project 2025. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
Tyler Swanson, who serves on the Wake County Board of Education, said beyond eliminating the federal Department of Education, the playbook would cut $20 billion in funding every year for the most vulnerable students.
“It would abolish Head Start devastating universal Pre-k programs in many states and in the public loans forgiveness program. It would give massive tax cuts to Trump billionaires and donors in big corporations and on top of that. Trump and Vance are supporting a slate of extremist candidates here in North Carolina like Mark Robinson and my former opponent for School Board, Michele Morrow.
“Robinson has called our teachers quote ‘wicked people’ and advocated for eliminating the board of education, while Morrow has called for political violence and was a part of the mob on the Capitol on January 6th. Our students deserve better than that,” said Swanson.
For her part, Morrow has said past endorsements of political violence have been taken “out of context.”
Kimberly Jones, the 2023 North Carolina State Teacher of the Year, reminded the group the stakes in this election could not be higher when it comes to students and the future of education.
“On one hand, you have Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, they know that education is the key the middle class, and they know that when our middle class is strong our nation is strong,” said Jones.
Jones believes Harris would also work to ensure that parents can afford high quality childcare and preschool for their children.
“On the other hand, President Trump proposed massive cuts to public education. Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda would give him unchecked power over our daily lives. Any of the reasonable people who were around him last time are long gone. There are no guardrails this time.”
Jones, a veteran teacher with 19 years of classroom experience, also worried that Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson would follow in lockstep Trump’s proposed cuts to public education.
Jones called Robinson’s sharp rhetoric accusing teachers of indoctrination of students was “a slap in the face” to North Carolina’s 90,000 educators.
Helene’s destruction and recovery loom large as Election Day nears
“Even now in the midst of the devastating wake of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, our teachers and schools are doing what they’ve always done,” Jones said. “They are opening their doors to everyone, and they are doing the hard work and the heart work that makes our communities thrive. As teachers we take our responsibility to our students extremely seriously and that’s why we’re all here today to fight for our students to fight for our schools.”
Lt. Gov. Robinson has spent the past week gathering private resources to help people in western North Carolina, while criticizing the response efforts of Governor Roy Cooper and the federal government.
“Our taxpayers deserve to know that when disaster strikes our government will be there to keep us safe. To say that they have failed us this time would be a tremendous understatement,” Robinson shared on social media Friday.
State Sen. Kevin Corbin (Photo: NCGA)
Many of the false claims offered by Robinson and former President Trump during a Friday appearance in Fayetteville have been debunked as misinformation.
Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) has urged the public stop spreading conspiracy theories across social media.
“PLEASE help stop this junk” Corbin wrote on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) calling it “a distraction” from people trying to help the region recover.
More than $27 million FEMA Individual Assistance funds have been paid so far to Western North Carolin disaster survivors and more than 83,000 people have registered for Individual Assistance. Nearly 1,400 people are now housed in hotels through FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance.