- We examine the North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction race on this very special "State Lines."

[upbeat instrumental music] Hello, I'm Kelly McCullen.

This "State Lines" special will focus on the 2024 Superintendent of Public Instruction race here in North Carolina.

The state superintendent manages the daily operations of the Department of Public Instruction, or DPI, serves four-year terms.

And should the person win, they do not face term limits.

Let's welcome to the "State Lines" set Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Ms. Morrow, welcome to the show, welcome to the set.

Good to have you.

- Thank you so much.

- I ask this of everyone because voter identification of candidates across North Carolina, if you're not in the governor's race or running for president, seems to be quite low as a percentage.

Who is Michele Morrow, what made you seek the superintendent's role in 2024?

- I am a very concerned citizen.

I'm a mom, I'm a nurse.

I've been a teacher, and I've been an advocate for children for the last eight years here in North Carolina.

And I am tired of a failed system that is not providing the sound, basic, moral education that's promised to every student in this state.

- You said moral, basic, moral education.

I've heard of the basic sound education.

Is there a difference in that, in your opinion?

- Absolutely.

If you read what we're talking about, about what should be taught in our classrooms and what should not be taught, there's absolutely a responsibility that we are teaching our children character and integrity issues, as well as academic prowess.

- Tell us about the character education, do you have a policy as part of your plank of ideas out there?

How do you infuse that into the public school system?

And around all the other class, 'cause you have STEM and things of that nature that are a priority in the era of subsidized testing.

- You know, back in the early 2000s there was a push that we were going to focus on character development.

And so, every month our schools would take a character trait and they would describe it and they would read books about people that were examples of it, and children would write about it.

And I think we need to return to that.

Things like honesty and hard work and perseverance and respectfulness.

- Let me ask you about your experience with the public schools as a mom and as someone who's been in advocacy for education, if not public education, what has been your brushes with the public education system?

- I have five children, and they have all been in public, private, and homeschool at different points in their career.

Now, four of my children have graduated and moved on and they are, they're working.

And my last is in seventh grade.

But so my, I have a child that had an IEP, had issues, and so we were in the public school system for four years and I fought that.

And the reason why I actually took that child home is she was not getting the education she needed.

So, we are the poster family for school choice.

- When it comes to public ed, you look at that, when you say you weren't served well, do you go to the teacher level and go, "Those teachers didn't serve me well?"

Or is it a system that isn't serving parents, and how well is the system serving parents and teachers and employees?

- It is absolutely a broken system, and that's why I'm running because we cannot have more of the same.

We have got to get the US Department of Education out of our state and we need to focus on academic excellence, career preparedness, and bringing safety and discipline into every classroom in North Carolina.

- What's wrong with the US Department of Education?

I've heard this in prior presidential cycles mainly, but you're bringing it out there.

What's wrong with federal money, with federal influence over state education?

- Well, there's nothing wrong with federal money in that it comes from all of our pockets.

What's wrong is when they demand that we do things that are dividing our students by the color of their skin, that are defining the United States as somewhere that's inherently racist, or that they're saying that capitalism is the reason for all of the ills in the world and that socialism is the direction that our country should go.

- Do you have, is there an example, are you seeing in certain classes, is it in history, is it in geography, is it in math?

Where are you seeing the lines of academic teaching that have brought you into this race in an effort to change and reform?

- Well, really when I ran for school board two years ago, I was exposing the fact that there is not only sexually explicit content in our public libraries, but there's also very graphically violent content as well.

And there were trainings for teachers that are CRT trainings.

They don't call it that anymore, but they are basically telling teachers that you need to apologize, you need to uncover your unconscious bias.

We were finding different curriculum that they were talking to three year olds in Pre-K classes and discussing the fact that we are, our value and our future is determined by the color of their skin.

That's abject racism, and it has no place in North Carolina schools.

- Well, and Wake county is, I would call it, it's growing, but it's a big city school district.

A couple million families are in that triangle region.

There's a lot of rural schools out there.

What are you seeing in rural versus suburban versus urban schools?

- Well, I'm seeing in rural schools it's very hard to keep great teachers because they're coming to the cities in order to get higher pay.

I was just at some fabulous schools yesterday actually.

I visited in Pender County, and I believe that this is true.

In 2024 there is no excuse why every student in every zip code should not be getting an excellent education and career preparedness.

The stats tell us that only 38% of those graduating from high school are going to go on to a four-year degree.

What are we doing for that other 62% to prepare them to enter into the workforce or to enroll in our military?

- So, what are you going to do to influence them to do that?

'Cause obviously it's a problem you've seen, solve that for us.

- Absolutely.

The first thing we need to do is we must maintain that no child leaves fifth grade without mastering reading, writing, and math.

That is the basis on which all higher levels of learning happens.

And then we need to be exposing our children to different options.

I think we need to expand the CTE programs, the trades and technical opportunities, in junior and senior years.

And there are some really great, like I was just at Pender High School yesterday.

They have an amazing CTE program.

And it is not only benefiting the students, it's benefiting their entire community because it's enhancing those businesses and it's actually making them more economically secure in Pender County.

- I've seen a lot of tech ed out there has been around for decades in North Carolina.

It does still seem to be working.

You're saying it's not working well enough.

What are you seeing?

Are you seeing more of like the early college high school where you get a two-year degree with your diploma?

Do you see an era where guidance counselors tell students maybe they don't need to go to, maybe they should consider other options than four-year universities?

There's a million things, and I dealt with it way back in the day as well.

- Yeah, no, I think, I really think the CTE programs that are in place are working very well.

The problem is that depending on what district you live in you might be limited as to what your options are.

I would like to expand options so that regardless of where you live, and really we need to look at it as, to your point, we have very different demographics throughout the entire state of North Carolina.

So, I think especially in these rural areas we need to say what are the businesses that are thriving, what is needed to ensure that this community is going to be able to continue to thrive?

And if we are training up the next generation to be able to work in these businesses we might be able to attract more people from out of our state to come and to set up shop here in North Carolina rather than being attracted more so to all of the big cities.

- Yeah, let's wake up the teachers who might be watching this.

What about teacher pay in North Carolina cross, what do you do about that?

- Well, we absolutely need to treat our teachers like the professionals that they are.

And I think when we get out of the bureaucratic and political agendas that we are being forced upon, we are going to have the money to make sure that it's going to student success and absolutely to teachers and the resources in the classroom.

- How do you weigh that when you walk in, if you're elected superintendent, you've got the administration, the superintendents who are gonna really deal with you, not teachers, maybe not even principals.

Do you separate those two forms of leaders, and how do you work with both without picking a side?

Or can you pick a side to make reform?

- Well, I really think that the goal is that we get in and everyone that has the intention of student success, you're welcome at the table, right?

We're going to need people at all levels who really have the best interests of our students at heart.

And I think what needs to happen is to maintain that every law is obeyed regardless of what district you live in, and that we are giving the resources to the classrooms, to the schools so that our students can reach their fullest potential.

- If you move into an official position there goes the bully pulpit and there goes the citizen advocate because then you join that system.

You're gonna inherit a huge building full of people who've dedicated their careers to public education.

What kinda leader are you, and what would you expect of them?

What should they think of you?

- I am a servant leader.

I have been in many leadership roles, and there's never a job that I'll ask someone to do that I'm not willing to do myself.

And I'm also a mediator.

I absolutely am on board with anybody who has, as I said, the excellent education at their baseline.

I am not going to tolerate people that are going to push political agendas in our classrooms, that are going to disobey parental rights, that are going to be using our children as a weapon of activism rather than teaching them how to think.

We don't wanna tell them what to think or what to feel any longer.

And I am excited because this is an advocacy role, and I disagree that I don't have a bully pulpit or I can't be an activist anymore in that my activism is all about the people of North Carolina.

It's all about the children of our state, and they need someone who's going to stand up.

I do not intend to serve the system.

I intend to serve the students.

- I've heard some chatter about incorporating some faith-based learning into public education.

Where do you stand on that?

I thought I saw an article float by, it was like a one-day event.

Do you believe there's a place for faith in the school?

Should we keep it everything nice and clean to reading, writing, and arithmetic?

- I absolutely believe that in middle school and high school that we should have elective Bible classes being taught as a historical reference, being taught as the basis of how we became the United States of America, and the constitutional reality of how we even got the greatest government document ever written.

So, absolutely, we should give children that opportunity.

And most people don't recognize, our students absolutely have their First Amendment rights, and they can discuss, they can write about, they can do projects on anything that is close to their heart and anything that they care about.

Now, we can't have our teachers proselytizing, right, as state employees, but our students need to be released to be able to talk about and to invest in and to be who they are.

And faith is a huge part of who we are as human beings.

- You're a mother that's been in that fight against school boards and running for local school boards, but if you're state superintendent how do you manage the parents?

Because once the emotions get going in the education space it gets, it does get outta control.

- It does.

- [Kelly] How do you manage that because all of a sudden you're on the other side of that microphone?

- Well, you know, I really had some fabulous conversations, even when I ran for school board, and people that were very upset with me and very fearful that I did want to push my faith or whatever it might be onto their children.

And when we sat down and I would just say, "What is your real concern?

What do you really want to see solved?"

We could find common ground, and that's what we need.

We need that civil dialogue, we need that logical discussion.

Because I know from talking to people throughout the state of North Carolina, every parent wants the best for their children.

It doesn't matter your race, your religion, or your politics.

We are concerned that our children are not getting the education that they need to be able to pursue careers that are gonna be, not only make them financially independent, but also gonna be able to compete in this global marketplace that we find ourselves in.

- We know what Democrats are thinking, but you have to deal with Republicans if elected.

What do you say to the ones, the ones that like you are on board, but there's a lot out there, more establishment I would say, who might be skeptical of a Michele Morrow administration.

What do you say to them once you get to Raleigh, how do you work with them?

And that'll be our last question.

- Well, I have to say I have a really great relationship with most of the members of the K-12 Senate Committee as well as the House Committee because I've been there for the last six years.

And I am a solutions-oriented person.

This is not about me personally.

This is about the issues, and this is about ensuring that our students are safe, that they're educated, and that they are prepared to be successful as adults.

- Michele Morrow, Republican nominee for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina.

Thanks for coming on "State Lines."

Excellent interview, appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- Safe travels.

I say to all the candidates, be safe out there.

- Thank you.

- Well, absentee ballots will start going out as of early September.

In-person early voting begins October 17th, 2024 and ends on November 2nd, 2024.

Remember, election day is, traditional election day is November 5th, 2024.

That will also be the deadline for those absentee ballots to be received by elections offices.

And when you cast your ballot this year you will be asked to present a photo identification.

[upbeat instrumental music] Let's start off our conversations with Maurice "Mo" Green, the Democratic candidate for state superintendent.

Sir, thanks for being on this special "State Lines."

- Ah, great, thank you for having me.

- Well, we've always started out, people see the names and they see the ads, but behind those ads is a person.

Who's Mo Green, and it would be Maurice Green on the ballot, but who's Mo Green and what do you bring to the table should you become superintendent?

- Great, thank you.

And on the ballot it'll actually say Maurice "Mo" Green.

What I bring to the table, so I'll talk about maybe a little bit about professional and then maybe a little bit about personal.

So, professionally what I bring to the table would be I was a superintendent of Guilford County schools for 7 1/2 years.

And so, Guilford County is the third largest district in the state.

When I was superintendent served over 70,000 or so students.

Yeah, and we were able to do some good things, including improving student achievement, raising graduation rates, and also being recognized as a national district of character.

Now, before that I served as the attorney, general counsel if you will, for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.

And that led into me then becoming the chief operating officer and then deputy superintendent for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Those jobs in CMS were also about 7 1/2 years.

And then most recently I served as the executive director for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

And that's a foundation that's based in North Carolina, only funds in North Carolina.

Funds any number of things, including supporting public education.

I also have been blessed to have many, many opportunities to work on various boards and initiatives focused on any, a myriad of things related to public education, including homeless students, the arts, high school athletics.

I was the president of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association for a term, media, community support policy.

So, that's a little bit about me on a professional level, if you will.

Personally, I've been married to my wife Stephanie for 32 years.

We were blessed to have two children, and both of them attended and graduated from North Carolina public schools.

- What is the personal and professional scale like to go from an attorney of a large school system to superintendent of just a slightly smaller school system to chairman of a huge organization that helps public education.

How have you changed through that process?

What has it taught you about public ed?

- Well, first of all, what it taught me is that there are a lot of great things going on in our public schools, and oftentimes those things are missed because there are absolutely things that we need to work on and improve in our public school system.

And so, being, if you will, on the inside and seeing the great work that folks are doing day to day on behalf of our students, that was the first thing.

Because oftentimes the headlines might suggest otherwise.

The second thing that it clearly showed to me is the reforms, some require additional resources.

And the more that I've been involved in school systems the more I've, or related or around the school systems, the more I've become to fully appreciate how North Carolina is continuing to spiral downward with regards to things like funding of our public schools, which is then impacting the ability for the school system to do as well as it used to.

I'll just throw out a couple of statistics to sort of back that up, if you will.

So, you're talking about North Carolina now being 48th in the entire country with regards to public school funding.

If you compare us to our border states of Virginia and South Carolina, we're three to $4,000 less than those states.

We're about 5,000 less than those states, oh, excuse me, than the national average.

- [Kelly] Is that per student?

- Per student.

And so, you might think that that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you times it in North Carolina times over 1.3 million students you begin to recognize that that's real money that could do some incredibly important things for our students.

- How does that counter with Republicans who've written budgets who say we have increased funding for education every single year, and they would be, I guess, statistically correct about that.

But you come in as a candidate and go, "Yeah, we're still 48th."

Is the cost of education as a public service rising that fast, or is North Carolina just watching the trends and staying just below the trend lines to keep us at 48, 49, 50?

- Yeah, so I think it's a combination of any number of things that one could perhaps look at, including the fact that in one of the, the same report actually, said, "Well, what is the effort that North Carolina can put into public education compared to the rest of the nation?"

And the report a few years ago said that North Carolina was actually at the absolute bottom, not a state below it.

So, this is, you know, if you're a poor state then perhaps you would say, "Well, we can't afford it."

So, that's why we then would be 48th in public education funding.

Turns out North Carolina can afford to do more.

We're choosing not to do more.

So, I think that is one of the issues.

And then certainly, absolutely, there are increases in things.

We know what's happened with regards to inflation.

At the same time, we're not paying our educators to keep up with even the rising inflation prices.

So, this is a combination of things that has caused North Carolina's public school systems then, school system, to be near the bottom, and need to really do dramatic turnaround to get us to a place where we can increase the resources, which will allow then more great things to happen in our public schools.

- What's your experience with the current General Assembly leadership?

A new House Speaker is coming in and it looks like it'll be Representative Destin Hall, but Phil Berger's been in the Senate, oh boy, for 13, 14 years as Senate Majority Leader.

And you're a known person in the triad area.

Tell me about that relationship.

Do you think you can, or how can you influence budget writers to hear your case?

- Sure.

So, I certainly have had a relationship with Phil Berger over the years.

Certainly try to appreciate where he's coming from, and then where his party is coming from on any number of issues.

Sometimes that does require us to challenge what's going on.

And so, there certainly have been instances where, I'll just give one example, where we said perhaps the way that the General Assembly is going is not appropriate for our school system.

And that was with regards to something called career status for teachers, right?

So, folks will know about tenure at the higher education level.

This is similar, that educators can earn that status after working a certain number of years, right?

They wanted to essentially eliminate that and have educators go to a sort of a contract basis, one to four years.

And I said, "Going forward, we absolutely can do that, but those who have already earned it I don't think you can just simply take it away," which is essentially what they were trying to do.

And so, we did bring Guilford County Board of Education, Durham County Board of Education, and one individually named plaintiff, that was me, brought a lawsuit saying that is not the appropriate way to go forward for those who had earned it.

Now, on other things, I think we've worked well together when, as an example, trying to bring forward legislation on a couple of issues, one around volunteers, another around law enforcement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg found a great and positive response from the General Assembly.

So, I look forward to those conversations.

I think we'll be able to engage in ways that I think will be beneficial.

And then the last thing I'll say on this point is this, the way that I operate is not to be by myself.

It's going to take the entire state to come along with me and say, "These are important issues for our children and for public schools."

And so, different voices, I think, will have the ability to have positive impact on the General Assembly.

- In this political climate there are gonna be a million people out there who cast ballots in favor of fundamental, I would dare say, reform of the public education system, whereas you're coming from the other side as a superintendent.

What do you say to those folks who are frustrated with public schools to a point that they say you know, we'll vote for something completely different, a completely different set of policies to mix it up, to change it up, to blow it up, if you will, no pun intended.

What do you say to them, how do they, how do you convince them that you are the right person to bring the best in our public schools out?

- Sure.

So, I'll point to a number of things in that regard.

The first of which is this, I am actually a non-traditional, if you think about it, in the sense of public schools historically have hired only traditional folks who have educational backgrounds, and that led to a superintendent's license to be a superintendent.

The law changed a few years before I was able to become, I'm told, the very first non-traditional superintendent in the state of North Carolina.

So, I come from a mindset of being on the outside and figuring out then what it is that one could do to really try to reform and improve the public school system.

So, that's the first thing.

The second thing is the way that I approached the work then was exactly that, that there are things that need to be done in our public schools.

I don't shy away from that.

We had the most low-performing schools in the entire state under the old accountability model when I started.

But we decided that we would come up with this huge vision that basically said we're gonna combine academic excellence with character development, and then an overall expression of excellence being the best.

And what that did was then it allowed us to do a number of different things that many folks now look back and say, "Well, those were incredible reforms that really made positive improvements on our educational system."

To the point that under that old accountability model, those low-performing schools were not low performing.

We also then increased graduation rates from the high 70s to almost 90%.

It's now over 90%.

At the same time, we increased the number of students who were taking and passing college-level courses, or Advanced Placement exams or International Baccalaureate exams pretty dramatically, increased the number of kids who were doing career and technical education courses, and was a national district of character.

So, when I hear folks talk about concerns I say, "Allow us, the folks who have worked the work, to have enough resources to do what we know can be done.

And then watch us get the work done."

And then the final thing I will say is this, the work that must be done is not simply work of those who are employed in the school system.

It takes everybody from parents, community members, along with students to make the changes happen.

- Mr. Green, thank you so much for being on this very special "State Lines" for this special interview.

It'll be Maurice "Mo" Green on the ballot, Democratic candidate for state superintendent.

Thank you, sir.

- Thank you.

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