Last week for the web, Lena Geller wrote about a roundtable hosted by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Wake County Rep. Erin Paré, where they and other conservative wonks touted “parental rights” and bemoaned the “decline” of public schools. This from the guy who thinks history and science shouldn’t be taught at the elementary school level. Our readers had thoughts.
“Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is a no win for voters and a sure loss for any hope at helping public schools,” wrote Facebook commenter Glenn Maughan.
“He’s such a bad human,” concludes commenter Marti Brauer.
Not unrelatedly, we republished a story from partner newsroom NC Policy Watch about a Cary charter school’s citation for failing to serve disabled students. Twitter commenter @carolina27712 had a lot of thoughts on the report:
“I’m intrigued by this. Schools in general—public & private—often fail our students w/disabilities. I used to work at a local center that supported kids w/learning differences & these kids were being let down by their schools—including ‘good’ schools like East Chapel Hill. What often happened was that families w/resources either ended up homeschooling their students or sending to elite private schools like Durham Academy where they got a lot of personal attention. But even private schools didn’t know what they’re doing—& some would not admit students w/learning differences because they couldn’t (wouldn’t) help them. Which of course is why we need well resourced public schools—so everyone can learn & be served. Unfortunately many public schools just aren’t able to meet kids where they are at either. It’s brutal. I hope we can examine how our schools fail our students with disabilities & have conversation on how to remedy this. (And then maybe at some point we should talk about how EC [exceptional children] classrooms too often become the place that teachers push out rowdy kids to, kids who don’t need an IEP [individualized education program] or services necessarily and don’t belong in EC. And you guessed it, these kids are often Black & brown boys. Anyways that’s a whole separate rant …).”
Another thought from commenter Amy Jay:
“This is the way many Charters are. Nothing surprising here. It is just a way to segregate kids.”
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