Cooper signs dozen bills, including one to widen Teaching Fellows program

Bills signed would also boost fraud detection at the state unemployment office and relax rules on community college program for state inmates.

Posted 8:52 p.m. Jun 30, 2020 — Updated 11:50 p.m. Jun 30, 2020

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — State prisoners may have more educational options while they serve their sentence, the state's unemployment system will get $2 million to root out fraud and the state's Teaching Fellows program is more likely to expand into HBCUs under bills Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law Tuesday.

Cooper's office announced the signing of a dozen bills from the recent General Assembly session.

One ups the number of universities that can be part of the state's Teaching Fellows program, which offers college scholarships to students who agree to go into teaching. A cap of five universities now becomes eight.

House Bill 1096 also calls on the program to include "a diverse selection" of universities in the state, a response to critics who have pushed for years to have the state's historically Black colleges and universities included.

"Expanding the Teaching Fellows program will get North Carolina’s brightest students committed to teaching in our state’s classrooms," Cooper said in a statement. "We should include HBCUs in the expansion to improve diversity at the front of the classroom, which research shows can improve student performance."

House Bill 463 strikes language from state law that forbids using the money that goes toward community college programs for prisoners from being used for associates degrees. The program will still focus first on basic skills courses and job training programs but, if there's money left over, the bill drops the prohibition against it going toward two-year degrees.

House Bill 1229 has $2 million in it for the state Division of Employment Security to contract with consultants to look for fraud and cybersecurity attacks in the state's unemployment system. That system has been stretched thin by more than 1 million unemployment claims in the last four months, and it has paid out nearly $5 billion in benefits.

Senate Bill 750, which the governor also signed Tuesday, has $2 million in it for a chiller at Elizabeth City State University and $4 million for an HVAC system.

Other bills the governor signed Tuesday, according to his office: