Senate leader: High hopes for bipartisan deal on school reopening

The Senate's top leader said Tuesday afternoon that he expects a compromise deal with the governor, perhaps within hours, to resolve a partisan fight over school reopenings across the state.

Talks between Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and Gov. Roy Cooper have been going for about a week, Berger said during a press conference.

"At this point, all I can say is that we seem to be very close in principle," Berger said, adding that there could be "a bill in the coming hours."

The Republican legislative majority has pushed for legislation that would require all public schools in the state to reopen for in-person learning, and in some cases with less distancing than Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines call for.

Cooper vetoed the largest piece of legislation on the matter, Senate Bill 37, and called instead for local school boards to get students back into classrooms – but without a mandate.

A veto override vote failed in the Senate, but a second attempt is pending. That would be moot if a deal is reached, Berger said.

Berger, R-Rockingham, wouldn't get into details on the negotiations Tuesday afternoon, including the remaining sticking points. Cooper, during a routine briefing on the state's coronavirus response, confirmed the negotiations but didn't get into details.

Cooper said he's not actually seen a bill yet, but that he hopes the process is "getting to somewhere we can announce soon."

Berger and other Senate leaders had planned a press conference on school reopening Monday, but they postponed it because of the negotiations. Berger said Tuesday that he didn't want to postpone that press conference again and fuel speculation, so he went ahead, providing limited details.

"We are in serious negotiations with the governor," he said.

The governor, a Democrat, has a rough relationship with Republican legislative leaders. Asked to name the last time such a high-profile matter was resolved with this sort of compromise, Berger struggled to do so off the top of his head.

He said it might have been as far back as 2017, Cooper's first year in office, when a deal was reached to repeal key elements of House Bill 2, the state's transgender bathroom access bill.