Cary homeschool mom's anti-public school stance at odds with her goal to fill Wake school board seat

The race for District 9 of the Wake County Board of Education pits three newcomers against one another, including two who are diametrically opposed. They're competing for a seat held by Karen Carter, who has chosen not to run for reelection after two years on the board. Carter has endorsed Tyler Swanson.

Swanson and Michele Morrow differ on what the board should do for pandemic learning recovery, what teachers need from the school board, the role of public schools, what schools need to improve, exactly how to keep schools safe, whether special education students should learn certain content in general education classrooms, and what types of books should be available for checkout in school libraries.

They agree that teachers need to be paid more.

The race has also generated considerable conversation regarding candidates’ social media posts, particularly Morrow’s posts against public schools and on national affairs. Morrow has pushed conspiracy theories on 2020 election fraud and COVID-19 vaccines and posted about “taking out” enemies.

Although the board is nonpartisan, Michele Morrow has received the Wake County Republican Party’s endorsement, and Tyler Swanson has received the Wake County Democratic Party’s endorsement.

The district consists of 46.2% unaffiliated voters, 31.6% Democratic voters, 21.4% Republican voters and less than 1% of voters registered with other parties.

The candidates

• Tyler Swanson, 28, former Wake County Public School System special education teacher and current campaign strategist. He has been endorsed by the Wake County Democratic Party. He has been endorsed by Run for Something and the North Carolina Association of Educators.
• Michele Morrow, 51, a former nurse and and current stay-at-home mother and homeschool teacher. Morrow has five children, whom she has homeschooled since moving to Wake County. She has been endorsed by the Wake County Republican Party. Morrow has also been endorsed by Moms for Liberty.
• Tara Ann Cartwright, who according to her LinkedIn profile is a technical writer and editor. Cartwright didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview, nor did she complete the WRAL News candidate questionnaire. She also hasn't appeared at candidate forums and doesn't have a website.

The details

Term length: Four years, reelection in 2026

Where: Mostly Cary

The candidates participated in multiple forums, which can be viewed here (hosted at the Bond Park Community Center, Sept. 10)m here (hosted by Wake PTA, Wake Ed Partnership and the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce), and here (hosted by the League of Women Voters of Wake County).

What they say

On the role of public schools

• Swanson is a proponent of public schools and believes more funding is required to support success for all students.
• Morrow says public schools are necessary for some families to use, which is why she’s running. Morrow, a mother of five homeschooled children, has also called public schools “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers” and urged people not to send their children to them. During a candidate forum in September, she said, “I think the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people.” She says she’s running for school board because not everyone can send their children to school elsewhere.

Swanson, during the forum, declined to respond to Morrow’s statements, saying they are “not even worth my response.”

Who's running for Wake County school board?

On pandemic learning recovery

• Swanson says the school board should continue its new volunteer, high-dosage tutoring program — called Wake Together — and increase it.
• Morrow says the school board should use the funding it’s spending on Wake Together on paying teachers to provide after-school tutoring instead.

On what teachers need from the school board

• Morrow says the school board should raise pay for teachers using funds spent on other things currently. Morrow believes the number of teachers should increase, other staff should handle special education paperwork and teachers should stop administering surveys. She also argues that schools need more nurses to administer medications or handle medical situations that teachers currently must do. She doesn't want to increase the district’s budget and didn't have a specific proposal for what would be cut form the budget to pay for the additional personnel. But she noted the potential to reduce some administrative salaries or positions or cut the Office of Equity Affairs because test scores gaps between racial groups haven’t been eliminated during its eight years of operation.
• Swanson says the school board should ask commissioners to increase teacher supplemental pay when feasible and lobby the North Carolina General Assembly for high salaries. Swanson says he left his job as a special education teacher in the district last year after three years because he wasn’t earning enough money and felt burned out. Swanson says many teachers feel disrespected by “hateful rhetoric” used by politicians about teachers and what’s being taught in classrooms. That is causing some to leave, he said.

On what schools need to improve

• Morrow believes schools could improve if they didn't spend any time on nonessential items, such as “social activism” in curriculum. Morrow didn't provide examples of social activism but said she’s heard from conservative-leaning teachers that they are afraid of their colleagues learning of their political beliefs.
• Swanson says schools should focus on meeting children’s needs, including material and emotional needs, to prepare them for learning.

On school safety

• Swanson thinks the school board should continue to use school resource officers and work to improve and increase physical infrastructure to keep schools safe, such as security vestibules used to screen visitors. The board should push lawmakers for more funding for psychologists, nurses and others to help students, he said. School resource officers shouldn't discipline students, he said. “I do not believe in removing school resource officers from our schools; they play a key role in our schools,” he told WRAL News. “But we must ensure that we are setting clear expectations for our school resource officers.” During a forum in September, Swanson said he supports the continued prohibition against teachers carrying guns in classrooms.
• Morrow believes every school should have a “safety officer.” Morrow criticized the school system for not applying for state funds for more school resource officers. Lawmakers made $15 million available to all school systems, collectively, in the state. During the September forum, Morrow said she believes teachers should be allowed to carry concealed guns in classrooms but doesn’t think they should be required to or relied upon to stop shooters.

North Carolina law does not allow teachers to carry guns in classrooms.

While all of the Wake County school system’s middle and high schools have school resource officers, only four elementary schools do. The district did apply to use state school security funds for a visitor verification system that would conduct certain background checks on each school visitor before they are permitted to enter.

On how special education students should learn

• Morrow believes special education children, particularly at the youngest grade levels, should be taught certain subjects, such as math and reading, separately from their peers. She also said “gifted and talented” students should be taught separately. During a candidate forum, Morrow said she believes in “healthy competition” and said that was not possible when educating special education students and non-special education students together. “Those special education students are never going to be able to compete with those gifted and talented students.” In an interview with WRAL news, Morrow said she meant teachers struggle to teach students with different skill levels.
• Swanson, a former special education teacher, says special education students need extra focus and attention from more educators. He thinks teachers always need to teach to different skill levels and said special education students shouldn't be separated into their own classroom. He said special education applies to a wide variety of students with many different abilities, including high levels.

Federal special education law requires schools to try first to educate special education children in general education classrooms and to separate special education students only when the general education classroom becomes an obstacle to their learning. Special education students can also be gifted and talented students. The “exceptional children” term in North Carolina includes both groups.

On removing books from schools

• Swanson says librarians should be trusted to choose which library books belong in their schools, and students should have access to books that have characters like them in them. Many of the books targeted are some of the only books with LGBTQ+ characters in them, he said.
• Morrow thinks parents should consent to books being offered in libraries, and books that include sex acts in them are akin to child pornography. Morrow was among a handful of people who last year filed police reports against the school board because some books in school libraries included sexual content. Prosecutors declined to pursue charges.

School board policy, at the direction of state law, permits challenges to books being used in classwork and books that are available in libraries. In the past year, several parents have urged the school board to remove certain books with sexual content in them from libraries. Petitions have not concerned books assigned in classwork. The school board has rejected two petitions to remove books. It’s unclear whether or how many petitions were successful at the school level and never appealed to the board.

Community concern

While candidates in the District 9 race told WRAL News they want to stick to school board issues in the run-up to the district’s election, many others in Wake County don't.

Social media pages attacking each candidate have popped up, particularly against Morrow for numerous comments and social media posts Morrow has made.

In addition to calling schools “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers,” and urging people not to send their children to them, Morrow has also accused Democrats of stealing the 2020 Presidential election, suggested the death penalty against President Obama, Bill and Melinda Gates and “traitors,” called for the arrest of Joe Biden, referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as “population control,” called Islam “evil” on numerous occasions, suggested fake nooses on the necks of climate change protestors weren’t tight enough and joked that a mass shooting would be staged to distract from 2020 election controversy in Arizona. Morrow attended the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot with her oldest children and said she was there to teach her children a lesson about citizens’ role in a democracy.

Morrow also told WRAL News she doesn’t want to ban Islam, just “radical Islam,” and apologized for tweets she posted in early 2020 that called the religion evil and pushed for it to be banned.

Morrow has engaged with many critics on social media. She argues the groups that have endorsed Swanson — namely, the North Carolina Association of Educators — want to put politics in classrooms. She noted Swanson was among those arrested during one of the first “Moral Monday” protests in 2013. Those protests against actions of the Republican-led General Assembly resulted in numerous arrests.

Swanson declined to comment on Morrow’s social media posts or history in an interview with WRAL News.

Morrow answered several questions about posts before saying she only wanted to focus on education issues.

CORRECTION: A previous article misstated Morrow's former occupations.