Candidates for Governor and State Superintendent of Public Instruction will be interviewed on a special voter education edition of Triad Today this weekend.
Appearing during the half hour will be Democrat Mo Green and Republican Michele Morrow who are running to become North Carolina’s next Superintendent of Public Instruction. Morrow is a registered nurse with over a decade of teaching experience, and Green is the former superintendent of Guilford County Schools. An exclusive interview with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is also included in the program. Robinson, a Republican, is running for governor against Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein. I contacted Stein’s office and campaign a dozen times to invite him on the show, but I never received a response.
What follows are highlights from my interviews with the candidates.
Michele Morrow and Mo Green:
JL: Talk about your experience as an educator.
MG: I served as superintendent of Guilford County Schools for seven and a half years, and that is the third largest school district in the state. Prior to that, I was the deputy superintendent, COO, and legal counsel for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. After leaving Guilford schools I became the executive director for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
MM: I have five children and they’ve been in public, private, and home school. Two of my kids had some learning differences. They were initially in public school, and we went through the IEP 504 process, then I ended up home-schooling my kids for about 15 years. In addition, I also taught in micro-schools in Cary for 10 years where I taught high schoolers biology, chemistry, civics, and government, as well as Spanish.
JL: How involved should parents be in shaping their child’s public school curriculum?
MG: I certainly think that parents should have a voice in what the curriculum looks like and obviously I do believe it’s important for us to look to our experts, our educators if you will, to be the primary voice. They’ve been trained to develop a curriculum that would work well for students. Obviously, there are other entities that need to be involved including the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education. Everybody plays a role. But I do think that parents have their own lived experiences and oftentimes might be able to add something to what the experts think would be appropriate to teach.
MM: I don’t think we should put it on the parents to be choosing the curriculum. I think that is the job of the DPI. But for 15 years I had to go through curriculums and choose not only what I was going to teach, but also what was going to be the best fit for my children and their learning styles. I’ll say this, it is absolutely paramount that parents be invested in their schools and in their children’s education. I really believe that children are only going to reach their full potential when parents and teachers are working as a team to help that student.
JL: Why are you running to be State Superintendent of Public Instruction?
MG: I’m certainly concerned about the direction of our public schools. I’m concerned about the funding for our public schools. I’m concerned about the level of disrespect being shown to our educators. I believe my experience and my belief in public schools puts me in a good position to be the one to lead our public schools to a new place.
MM: I’m running because I believe our children are our future and the quality of our education system determines the quality of the economy here in North Carolina. We have got to raise the bar of expectation in scholastics as well as conduct. We need to broaden opportunities for our students so that when they walk off that graduation stage they are prepared for success as adults. I also want to join with businesses and expand the trade and technical training that we have in high school because I believe we can make our schools the best in the nation and an example for everybody else to follow.
Mark Robinson:
JL: What are some of the problems our state faces and how do you want to fix them?
MR: The main problem I see is with the inequities we see in the economy across the state. Our state is very fragmented with its economy. You go through the middle part of the state — Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston, Raleigh — and you see economic opportunities abound. But when you go to the eastern and western parts of the state you see opportunities not taken advantage of. And one of the reasons is that we haven’t had the financial wherewithal to make those substantive investments. The last 14 years under the Republican leadership of the House and Senate we’ve seen that growth in the state and now it’s time for us to start building that economy that spans from Murphy to Manteo, and I believe we can do it.
JL: What does your Public Safety Plan entail?
MR: I’m not a fan of playing the blame game, but our border has been wide open for four years, and there are some great people that have come here from foreign countries, but there’s also been some folks who are pretty bad who’ve come across our border and they’re doing some pretty bad things. I believe this state needs to set up some type of security council, along the lines of our national security council where we bring together sheriffs, police chiefs, state troopers, and FBI for the purposes of identifying folks who are here to plot bad things like drug trafficking, human trafficking, and folks involved in gangs. We need to identify those folks and stop them before they start. You know being proactive in law enforcement is the key. We need to give law enforcement the tools they need and the backup they need to be proactive so they’re not just showing up at the scene cleaning up the crime, and they can actually go out and pursue the criminals before they can ply their wares.
JL: Why do you want to be governor?
MR: I never set out to be governor. I never set out to be lieutenant governor. What I want to be is a servant to the people. This state has been very good to me and the people in this state have been very good to me, from the time I was a child all the way up to a young man, and now it’s time for me to have an opportunity to pay it back. And I believe the way I can pay it back is to go into public service as the governor to build that economy that spans from Murphy to Manteo, and to give parents the opportunity to control their children’s educational destiny.
Robinson, Morrow, Green on Triad Today
Candidates for Governor and State Superintendent of Public Instruction will be interviewed on a special voter education edition of Triad Today this weekend.
Appearing during the half hour will be Democrat Mo Green and Republican Michele Morrow who are running to become North Carolina’s next Superintendent of Public Instruction. Morrow is a registered nurse with over a decade of teaching experience, and Green is the former superintendent of Guilford County Schools. An exclusive interview with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is also included in the program. Robinson, a Republican, is running for governor against Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein. I contacted Stein’s office and campaign a dozen times to invite him on the show, but I never received a response.
What follows are highlights from my interviews with the candidates.