Advocates, legislators, parents hold press event to highlight Michele Morrow and Mark Robinson’s extreme anti-public education views
The Coalition Against Robinson’s Extremism (CARE), which includes Progress North Carolina Action, North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE), and more than a dozen other progressive organizations and advocacy groups, held a press conference Thursday morning on Halifax Mall in downtown Raleigh to highlight the dangers our state’s education system will face if Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and insurrectionist Michele Morrow get elected in November.
Playing off Robinson’s borderline obsession with trains, the press conference’s theme was that public education in North Carolina is at a crossroads and Robinson and Morrow want to derail us.
For years, Republican legislators have been underfunding our public schools and also undermining teachers and parents looking to provide the best for our children. They refuse to uphold the state’s constitutional mandate to provide students with the skills needed to succeed in the future. Now, Republicans like state superintendent nominee Michele Morrow and gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson want to dismantle our public education system.
Robinson has said our public schools should be defunded, wrote that he thinks science and history shouldn’t be taught in elementary schools, and called educators “wicked people.” Morrow has called public schools “socialism” and “indoctrination” centers, referred to teachers as “groomers” and said she would put surveillance cameras in school bathrooms.
“We need lower class sizes, not wild conspiracy theories. We need more teacher assistants and school nurses, not cameras in bathrooms. We need access to more technology and consistent internet, not banning library books,” North Carolina Association of Educators President Tamika Walker-Kelly said at Thursday’s event.
Both Robinson and Morrow also recently said they wanted to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and that they would reject more than $1.5 billion in federal education funds.
“There are two main funding programs that are [in] jeopardy of being cut based on the express educational policies of both Mark Robinson and Michelle Morrow. These are funds from Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Title VI of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. So, if you have a child with a disability, you should be alarmed too,” said Yolanda Taylor, an attorney for Advance Carolina with two children in public charter schools.
The message is clear: We must stop radical Republicans like Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow from dragging our schools down and hurting our children’s future. We will have that opportunity this fall.
