North Carolina schools will have a new leader next year. Here's what you need to know

North Carolina’s public schools will have a new leader next year.

Democrat Mo Green or Republican Michele Morrow will be in charge of implementing state laws and managing than $13 billion in state and federal funds for 1.5 million students — at a time when schools are facing increased politicization, challenges stemming from changes in technology and the rise of artificial intelligence, and lingering learning loss from the days of Covid-19 remote education.

A WRAL News Poll conducted last week by survey partner SurveyUSA shows Morrow and Green are virtually tied. Morrow leads 42% to 41%, though that’s well within the poll’s credibility interval.

The tight race has gained national attention, and it could indicate divergent views on what the electorate wants in its schools in part because Green and Morrow are drastically different candidates.

“In past races, it was a much lower profile kind of race in which got no national attention and really little attention from North Carolinians, because the races ended up being about relatively minor differences between the candidates,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh. “Now we see some pretty dramatic differences between the two candidates,” largely on cultural issues, such as race and LGTBQ+ rights.

Green isn’t promising much in the way of change from recent superintendent administrations when it comes to race or LGBTQ+ issues. He supports equity measures and isn’t calling for changes to how sexuality is broached in classrooms. Morrow, however, brings an outsider’s perspective: she’s a homeschool mom who worked as a nurse and has spent the past few years as a critic of public schools, calling them “indoctrination centers.”

“Morrow is such a different candidate and wants to really kind of restrict public schools from even touching on those matters,” McLennan said. That includes by cutting funding for any diversity, equity or inclusion efforts, though the superintendent position has limited control over how funds are spent.

Morrow said being an outsider is an asset and that her lack of experience working in public school systems won’t be an impediment.

“I have the ideas to do this,” Morrow said. “I'm going to create teams of people that are very experienced.”

Green said the job is too serious to leave up to an outsider. He’s a former Guilford County Schools superintendent and district administrator with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

“I've had a tremendous amount of experience,” Green said. “Nothing against homeschool, but you're talking about a massive educational operation, 11-plus billion dollars annually.”

The state superintendent runs the Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the state’s public schools. The superintendent administers state and federal funding to schools, administers various services to educators and schools, oversees compliance and drafts policies and academic standards for State Board of Education approval.

The superintendent can help shape guidance for schools on academics and new state laws. They’re also largely an advocate for what the state’s public schools need.

The superintendent has state lawmakers’ ears for what the rules should be, how much teachers should be paid, what programs and services schools should offer. Lawmakers set state education budgets and most state education policies.

In recent years, the role has been at the center of politicized debates over whether to propose changes to teacher licensure to state lawmakers and new social studies standards, which were primarily drafted during the administration of former state Superintendent Mark Johnson and adopted by the State Board of Education in early 2021.

The superintendent is also looked to for guidance on new laws and policies, some of which have been politicized, such as the relationship between parents and schools when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. Others are less controversial but still pressing, such as guidance on artificial intelligence in schools and how to continue academic programs after the loss of federal stimulus dollars.

With few exceptions, Green and Morrow are worlds apart.

Morrow is opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to help reduce racially disparate outcomes for children — she advocates for better curriculum — and has criticized LGBTQ+ activism, which she has falsely accused to including pedophilia. When it comes to reducing the far higher discipline rates for children with disabilities, Morrow supports harsher discipline for disruptive students that might interfere with some students’ learning.

Green supports schools analyzing why academic and disciplinary outcomes can vary so much by race and disability and ensuring students are being punished similarly for similar offenses and that they have supports to help improve their behavior.

“It's critically important that you have someone in our schools that believes in our schools,” Green said.

Green thinks schools have room to improve and that he understands what that takes.

Morrow says schools are full of liberal indoctrination and are virtual war zones when it comes to misbehaving kids. She wants more kids removed from classes and schools.

“If we can't bring discipline and order back to the classroom, then learning is not going to happen,” Morrow said.

A 2021 survey of teachers, commissioned by the right-leaning think tank Heritage Foundation, shows teachers are only slightly more liberal than the average North Carolina adult. The Heritage Foundation has said the number of teachers who are conservative should be encouraging for Republican causes and that teachers should be considered allies in their education reform efforts.

Morrow has repeatedly called schools “indoctrination” and “socialism” centers that are a “cesspool of evil and lies” because of liberal influence. She told WRAL News that she believes the curriculum is liberal, not the teachers. On her website, she urges teaching unity and patriotism in school, rather than content that might be divisive.

Yet public opinion, at least generally, remains fairly favorable toward people’s own schools. What’s worsened is people’s perceptions of public schools as a whole.

In 2022, Gallup found that most U.S. parents continue to be satisfied with their own children’s education, although most U.S. adults were not satisfied with public education overall. That suggests some dissonance between people’s own experiences and their perceptions of schools their children don’t attend.

But education has become more politicized in recent years, especially as a place to fight the current culture wars, McLennan said.

“So we're seeing that just play out all across North Carolina, from the local school board races now to the superintendent's race, but it's already been happening in the legislature,” he said.

The General Assembly last year passed Senate Bill 49, which Republican supporters called the Parents Bill of Rights. It mostly re-stated existing parental rights but also ensured reproductive health could not be taught prior to fifth grade and that parents would be notified if their child ever asked school employees to call them by a different name or pronoun — something a transgender student might do.

Morrow supports SB49, but Green has said it was unnecessary.

The race to oversee the state’s public schools has also included plenty of its own controversy.

Green and others have criticized Morrow for social media posts calling for the execution of former President Barack Obama and others. She also called for using the military to keep former President Donald Trump in office in 2021, shortly after attending the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. She’s spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and mass shootings. Obama even weighed in on the race — unusual for a former president.

“We can't have somebody saying just crazy stuff running your school system, purchasing textbooks, allocating resources for our kids,” he said, during a rally for Kamala Harris in Charlotte Oct. 25.

Morrow has apologized for posts that called for banning Islam but has defended her other posts, repeatedly suggesting Obama and other politicians are guilty of treason.

When WRAL News asked if she still believes Obama, Bill Gates and others deserve the death penalty, Morrow again brought up treason.

“I believe in the Constitution that says, if someone has been convicted of treason, that that is the result,” she said.

On other major education issues, Morrow and Green have some disagreements.

Green supports more school funding, more employees and improving school safety with school resource officers and even weapons detection systems.

“We have to have more mental health professionals working,” Green said, noting that North Carolina doesn’t have the recommended ratio of students to school psychologists and other professionals who support both health and academic needs.

Morrow has criticized Green, a former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, for giving out grants to nonprofit organizations that have supported reducing or eliminating school resource officers. Green says he supports school resource officers. The Winston-Salem-based foundation provides grants to several dozens of organizations every year for public art, problem-solving and community organizing. Some grants are for specific projects and some are for general organizational operating costs.

Green said he would advocate for more school funding from the state General Assembly.

Morrow isn’t sure schools need any more money and says she doesn’t plan to ask for more, at least at first. But she supports expanding school resource officer programs, bringing in more contractors, reforming codes of conduct and teaching unity and patriotism in schools.

The candidates do have some things in common.

Both support raising teacher pay, improving character education and continuing work on improving literacy instruction.

Morrow wants to afford higher teacher pay and other efforts by cutting funding from programs she says are unnecessary — something she can likely only advocate for, rather than unilaterally do. The General Assembly determines school funding via dozens of allotments that often have their purposes outlined in state statute. After that, the State Board of Education adopts policies for using those funds.

But Morrow says she plans an audit of how all education dollars are spent and which ones research has shown to be effective or not, so she can figure out which ones are being wasted.