Tuesday, May 15, 2018 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: NC educators list legislative demands ahead of teacher rally, protests held in Raleigh as Poor People's Campaign launches, Confederate flag spurs debate and public hearing, Democrats unveil platform for fall campaigns and more.

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EDUCATION
ADAM OWENS: NC educators group lists legislative demands ahead of teacher rally (WRAL-TV reports) -- The North Carolina Association of Educators has released a list of legislative demands ahead of Wednesday's teacher march and rally, which is expected to draw as many as 15,000 teachers to Raleigh.

LIZ SCHLEMMER: N.C.’s School Voucher System Continues to Grow: How Did We Get Here? (WUNC-FM) -- Darrell Allison is on the road again, taking a final long trip to visit private schools across North Carolina. He's used to traveling - to small towns, suburbs, down east and to the mountains to talk to parents and legislators across the state.

ALLISON KLEIN: Homeless addict learned to read at 37. Now, he's a college graduate. (Washington Post reports) -- Freddie Sherrill was homeless, an alcoholic and drug addict, and he used to steal his kids' Christmas presents from under the tree and sell them. He was eating out of dumpsters. He could not read or write. Sherrill spent years in and out of prison and rehab centers in North Carolina. He once threw a brick through a store's glass window on a freezing night so police would bring him in from the cold. But after a long and painful journey, Sherrill was able to claw his way back to sobriety and he even learned to read. In one of his biggest accomplishments yet, he graduated from Queens University of Charlotte with a bachelor's degree earlier this month at age 65.

MOLLY OSBORNE: Building community one bus ride at a time (EdNC reports) -- For the past two weeks, the staff at North Edgecombe High School in Edgecombe County have been riding school buses home with their students. At each stop, teachers and administrators get off the bus with the student and greet mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, or whoever is home. The goal of these bus rides, according to principal Donnell Cannon, is to build community within their school by deepening relationships between staff and students and learning more about where each student comes from.

MARTH WAGGONER: Audit recommends on-site monitoring of NC community college (AP reports) -- An audit recommends that North Carolina's top community college officials consider on-site monitoring of a school whose leaders are described as being "uncooperative, belligerent and argumentative" during an investigation.

YASMIN BENDAAS: School nutrition: A way to make North Carolina students thrive (EdNC analysis) -- Last December 900,000 students in the state of North Carolina received a free or reduced school lunch meal, said Katherine Miller, senior director of food policy advocacy at the James Beard Foundation and moderator for a panel on childhood and school nutrition at the Thrive NC Summit. Hosted by Blue Cross NC, the summit held last Thursday gathered more than 150 food system stakeholders from across the state.

MYRON PITTS: Decision to publish Confederate flag image in yearbook a confusing one (Fayetteville Observer column) -- The question remains: How did this happen? The Cape Fear High School yearbook, which is supposed to be a forever keepsake for students, published a photo of a white, teen-aged boy wearing a Confederate flag shirt, holding a shotgun and standing in a cotton field. The image was published in the section of the yearbook where businesses and families pay for ads. The submission should have been dismissed as almost comically racist and sent back to the student for a do-over, with a firm, “Dude, really?” Instead, it made its way past a faculty advisor and into print.

CAMPAIGN 2018
GARY ROBERTSON: N.C. Democrats unveil platform for fall campaigns (AP reports) -- North Carolina Democratic lawmakers unveiled their to-do list if they got back some or all power at the Legislative Building after November, promising to raise teacher pay to the national average, expand Medicaid and retool how redistricting is done.

MARK BARRETT: Buncombe legislators push for Medicaid expansion as part of Democratic priorities (Asheville Citizen-Times reports) -- Expanding Medicaid to cover about 600,000 North Carolinians without health insurance would be one of Democrats' top priorities if they retake control of the state General Assembly, two local Democratic legislators said. With the federal government covering 95 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion, "These are terms so generous that it costs us money to turn them down," Sen. Terry Van Duyn, D-Buncombe, said at a press conference at a clinic serving low-income people. In front of the Minnie Jones Health Center, Van Duyn and Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, outlined policy proposals from the state House and Senate Democratic caucuses that Democrats would pursue if they gain control of the legislature in the November elections.

RUSTY JACOBS: NC Dems Lay Out Budget Priorities, Course For Winning Votes (WUNC-FM reports) -- North Carolina democrats laid out their legislative priorities for the upcoming short session, and a plan they hope will win them votes in this year's mid-term elections to break the republican veto-proof majority in the General Assembly. Democrats need to win four additional House or six Senate seats to end the GOP super-majority. All 170 legislative seats are being contested in the general election.

SETH THOMAS GULLEDGE: Lawmakers visit Greenville to announce legislative agenda (Greenville Daily Reflector reports) -- As part of a state-wide unveiling of the Democratic legislative agenda, area lawmakers visited the Pitt Street Brewery to discuss education, small businesses and infrastructure among a long list of priorities.

POLICY & POLITICS
CLYDE FITZGERALD: Axing SNAP won’t solve the real issues (Winston-Salem Journal column) -- In my 36 years of food banking, communities across Northwest N.C. have shown incredible support for our mission. From donors to volunteers to elected officials, that support has come from people from all walks of life, from all faith backgrounds, and has crossed partisan lines to create a universal mandate: all people deserve to eat. It is disheartening that the House Agriculture Committee ignored this mandate as well as the testimony of over 60 experts, program participants and government officials who testified to the importance and effectiveness of SNAP food assistance.

GARY ROBERTSON: After teachers leave, N.C. session likely to be quick (AP reports) -- A rally by thousands of teachers demonstrating for school funding could bring most other activities at the Legislative Building to a halt when the N.C. General Assembly session begins Wednesday, but activity should pick up after protesters leave town.

Don’t repeal rules on payday loans (Winston-Salem Journal) -- U.S. Rep. Rep. Ted Budd (R-Advance) and Rep. Mark Walker (R-Greensboro) are among members of Congress who support repealing protections against payday loans.

MIKAYA THURMOND: Protest held in Raleigh as Poor People's Campaign launches (WRAL-TV reports) -- A rally across from the North Carolina Legislative Building has ended with nearly 50 demonstrators being cited by police for protesting in the middle of the street.

LEONEDA INGE: Huge Confederate Flag Spurs Debate And Public Hearing (WUNC-FM reports) -- Residents of Orange County will get the chance to speak out on plans to clarify regulations on flags and flagpoles. The debate centers around the flying of a mega-sized Confederate flag over Highway 70.

ERIC SPANBERG: Former N.C. commerce secretary touts a different kind of horse power for Charlotte (Charlotte Business Journal reports) -- The World Equestrian Games are projected to attract an international audience and competitors in western N.C., helping bring guests to Charlotte-area hotels, resort executive Sharon Decker said.

HEALTH
MATTHEW BURNS: N.C. health, mental health, Medicaid generic Blue Cross pushed to cut state medical costs (WRAL-TV reports) -- The State Health Plan has ordered Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina to cut the rates paid to medical providers by at least 15 percent to save taxpayers and state workers millions of dollars.

CAMERON MCWHIRTER: In Small-Town Appalachia, the Retirees Come From Down South (Wall Street Journal) -- Census data show that from 2010 to 2017, net migration to retirement-destination counties in Appalachian regions of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee increased 169%, the same percentage of growth for retirement destinations in Florida, according to Hamilton Lombard, a University of Virginia demographer who has tracked the halfback phenomenon. During the same period, net migration to all U.S. retirement-destination counties increased 67%.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
CATHERINE CLABB: Agreement, Court Victory Give Hog Farm Critics Cautious Optimism (N.C. Health News reports) -- Citizen groups and their allies say recent success in court and in Raleigh may help force waste disposal changes at NC hog farms.

CATHERINE KOZAK: Gator Sparks Interest As State OKs Hunting (Coastal Review reports) -- A big alligator in a neighborhood canal in Kitty Hawk last week prompted headlines and concern but the state’s new management strategy of “population reduction hunts” has yet to see any permit seekers.

Why we should fear calling our river a swamp (Wilmington Star-News) -- “Drain the swamp!” our president declared on the campaign trail. But now some folks in Raleigh are trying to put a swamp in … downtown Wilmington? The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Environmental Protection Agency want to declare a 15-mile stretch of the Cape Fear River -- basically from Snow’s Cut to Navassa -- as swamplands. This set off Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo, who, like all good mayors, is a booster at heart. Mr. Saffo knows that, in addition to other concerns, having our national-award-winning riverfront suddenly situated along a swamp might be the worst marketing move since New Coke or that water-bottling operation near the Chemours plant.

… AND MORE
NC expects bumper crop of blueberries (WRAL-TV reports) -- Blueberry lovers should have a tasty summer, according to Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.