A sign welcomed “Education Governor Roy Cooper” Tuesday to Claxton Elementary School in Greensboro for Cooper”s final stop on his tour of public schools and his final school visit as the state’s 75th governor.
“Education is the key to most every opportunity,” Cooper told an audience of state and local education advocates, professionals, and elected officials. “That’s why our public schools needed to be in the spotlight this year.”
Cooper declared 2024 the “Year of Public Schools” in January amid travel he began in 2023 after Republican legislators introduced and passed a large expansion of Opportunity Scholarships, state-funded vouchers for students to attend private schools.
Cooper, a Democrat, was elected in 2016 after placing public education investment at the center of his campaign. He leaves office eight years later as billions in funding are planned to exponentially expand private school vouchers over the next decade. The expansion could lead to up to $100 million in losses for public schools within the first year, predicts an analysis from the Office of State Budget and Management.
“We are working hard to dispel the false narrative that public schools are failing,” Cooper said in an exclusive interview with EdNC.
The last two years, during which Cooper declared a “state of emergency” for public education, stand in stark contrast to the majority of his governorship, he said. Though the legislature was controlled by a Republican majority the entire time, Cooper said he felt there was a productive spirit of compromise earlier in his administration.
“The first few years of my term, it really appeared that the legislature wanted to engage in investment in public education, and we would go back and forth to see whose plan really was providing the most to teachers,” Cooper told EdNC. “I liked that.”
Those compromises led to increases in teacher and principal pay, as well as expansion of the NC Pre-K program, Cooper said.
Two years into Cooper’s second term, bipartisan legislators passed Medicaid expansion — a goal Cooper had set from the beginning of his initial campaign. For years, however, the issue was a non-starter for Republican leadership.
He said the strategy his team used to reach that goal is the same one he has taken inspiration from in raising public awareness about the importance of local public schools and the potential harm of voucher expansion.
“You often don’t have advocates for the poor and tough-on-crime sheriffs working to pass the same legislation. That’s what we had with Medicaid expansion,” he said in the EdNC interview. “We built a nontraditional coalition of people in areas where Republican legislators get elected to push for Medicaid expansion, and it succeeded. We need to build the same kind of coalition for public schools. And I believe that is already having an effect.”
“You do that,” he continued, “by having educators themselves, the parents who are choosing to send their children to public schools — which represents more than 80% of children in our state — the business and community leaders who recognize the importance of public schools, and the taxpayers who understand that when the state reduces its support for public schools that the county needs to pick up the slack if they’re going to maintain the level of performance that they want. So all of that together can bring people from both political parties together to advocate for public education.”
On Tuesday, Cooper pointed to some recent positives of public school outcomes: record-highs for the state’s graduation rate (at 87%) and its CTE credential attainment, the state’s first-in-country rank for National Board Certified teachers, and increases in students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses.
He uplifted public schools’ role outside of academics: dances, dinners, sports games, fundraisers, community gatherings.
“So many of our communities, especially in rural counties, find their meaning in their public school, the place where opportunities happen,” Cooper said.
“This is a good day to be a local public school teacher,” said Natalia Mejia, the NCCAT 2023 Empower NC Beginning Teacher of the Year, who attended Tuesday’s school visit. Mejia said she appreciated Cooper’s work showing up in person, including to her classroom at C.C. Griffin STEM Middle School in Cabarrus County.
“He really listened to my students’ voice,” Mejiah said. “I can’t thank him enough for that, because from there, my students believed they had a superpower. They believed that anybody could listen to them and would listen to them, and that their voices were worthy of being heard.”
Cooper thanked local leaders and community members in Guilford County for their work passing a $300 million bond in 2020 and a $1.7 billion bond in 2022 for school infrastructure needs. Claxton Elementary, which opened this school year, was the first school built with those funds.
“It is fitting that we are here in Guilford because it’s also the home of our newly elected superintendent of public instruction, Mo Green,” Cooper said. “He is and will continue to be a champion for our public schools.”
Green takes the stage
Green, also a Democrat, will be sworn in as superintendent of public instruction in January after winning the race against Republican candidate Michele Morrow last month. His superintendency follows two Republicans holding the office during Cooper’s terms: Mark Johnson and Catherine Truitt.
Green served as district superintendent of Guilford County Schools from 2008 to 2015. On Tuesday, he thanked Cooper for his education accomplishments.
“I thank him for his service and his commitment to advocating for our public schools, but we cannot stop when the calendar flips,” Green said at Tuesday’s event. “The year of public schools does not end this month. Our work must continue into the new year and beyond. Supporting public education should remain our top priority.”
Green said that will take a statewide strategic plan, as well as public investments in schools and teachers.
“We must go beyond respecting our educators. We must return North Carolina to a state that what?” he asked the crowd. “Reveres them.”
In comments to reporters after the event, Green mentioned prioritizing higher compensation for teachers and funds for infrastructure needs, both of which would require legislative action.
The legislature holds a firm majority but lost its veto-proof supermajority during November’s election. Democrat Josh Stein, who also received a shout-out from Cooper Tuesday, won the gubernatorial race.
Green recalled the first time he stepped foot into the former building that held Claxton Elementary School during his first day as district superintendent. He said all students deserve high-quality facilities and learning environments like those available because of the community’s investment in Claxton Elementary.
“North Carolina finds itself at a place where we are doing very good work for our children,” Green said. “We’re not at a place where we are struggling. And so the mission ought to be for us to be the very best school system in the entire country. That’s going to take all of us leaning in to do our part to elevate the educational opportunities for each and every one of our children.”
Prioritizing teacher diversity
Anthony Graham, provost at Winston Salem State University and former dean of education at North Carolina A&T University, attended Tuesday’s event with a particular bit of Cooper’s legacy in mind.
Graham served as the chair of Cooper’s DRIVE Task Force, which the governor created through an executive order in 2019 with an aim to match the student population’s increasing diversity in their teachers. In 2021, the group released recommendations for increasing the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the teacher workforce. The group then went on a tour to highlight work across the state that aligns with these goals.
At the end of 2023, the group voted for its work to continue under the nonprofit Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity.
Exactly five years before Tuesday’s event, Graham was at the initiative’s kickoff event, and was asked to be chairperson a month later.
“Gov. Cooper was one of the first governors who really elevated this notion of recruitment of teachers of color into the governor’s office, paying attention to issues of equity in public schools,” Graham said in an interview with EdNC.
He said the culminating report has raised awareness at the state and local level on the importance of teacher diversity, and strengthened efforts on recruiting and retaining teachers of color.
“It really has been a ripple effect, if you will,” Graham said. “And what gets measured and what gets evaluated is what gets done — and that’s what’s happened in this state. My hope is we will continue to pay attention to those metrics.”
Cooper’s motivation behind his 2019 launch of the initiative was two-fold, Cooper said in an interview with EdNC. One, he wanted to increase the number of teachers in the profession, and two, he had encountered a research base that showed the positive difference racial match had on student performance, both among students of color and among all students.
“Making sure that more diverse teachers have the opportunity to join the profession is important to the quality of public education overall,” Cooper said.
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Before and after K-12
Cooper spent time advocating for funding and policy changes at either end of the education continuum.
In early childhood education, his budgets consistently called for higher investment in child care subsidies, NC Pre-K, Smart Start, and compensation for child care teachers. Since the pandemic, he has directed the Department of Health and Human Services to distribute an unprecedented amount of federal funds to licensed child care programs. During his public school visits, Cooper also stopped at early childhood programs, calling attention to the child care crisis and stabilization funding cliff.
The legislature allocated funds this summer, and again this fall, to help programs avoid that funding cliff through compensation grants that will last until March.
Cooper said he has brought up the importance of high-quality child care and early learning in the same conversation as public school investment because they are directly tied.
“It’s clear that with the way the brain develops, that those first few years are critical in the potential and overall performance of students,” Cooper said. “So early investment in early childhood means a better performing student.”
As businesses understand the importance of child care for their own interests, Cooper said he has encouraged them to play an active role in advocating at the legislature. He has also placed a new position in his Department of Commerce, a child care business liaison, to strengthen momentum among the business community on the issue and push for both public and private solutions. Samantha Cole holds that position.
“That is becoming more apparent to these businesses, that this is not just a future thing, this is the present thing,” Cooper said. “So we’re continuing to urge businesses to be involved in this.”
At the other end of K-12, Cooper has spent time and resources on postsecondary attainment and community college investment. On Tuesday, he pointed to his office’s work on Finish Line Grants, a program that sent funding to community college students who are experiencing unexpected financial hardship and are close to completing a credential or degree.
In 2018, Cooper started the program with federal funding from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act under the state Department of Commerce, and he allocated another $14.5 million in federal funding to the program in 2022.
It now lives at the N.C. Community College System, with the system’s state board allocating $3.75 million in 2022. The program has served more than 16,000 students, Cooper said on Tuesday.
In 2021, Cooper used another set of federal funding, from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund, to create the Longleaf Commitment program, providing tuition assistance to 2021 high school graduates (at least $2,800 per family) to attend any community college. That fall, the state’s budget, which Cooper signed, expanded the program to another class of high school seniors.
“As we recruit businesses, my administration, we told them, (when) thinking about moving to North Carolina, that our community college graduates will absolutely make their company successful,” Cooper said Tuesday.
Constitutional case still alive
Well before Cooper’s time in office, and throughout his administration, the Leandro case has hung over education politics and policy. It started in 1994 when families in low-income school districts sued the state, claiming their children were receiving lower educational quality than other students. The case established students’ right to access a sound, basic education.
In 2017, Cooper established a commission through an executive order to create a plan for how to correct the state’s failures to live up to the obligation. The Governor’s Commission on Access to Sound, Basic Education met over two years, studying different aspects of the education system and creating recommendations on how to strengthen them. The group continued to urge legislators to take action to implement the court-ordered comprehensive remedial plan from 2021.
The state Supreme Court has issued a total of four opinions, with another expected by the end of this year. Since last year, the Supreme Court’s makeup has gone from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority. The court heard oral arguments in February on the future of the case.
“I know the court, in the way it is, that people aren’t as hopeful, but our constitution has been pretty strong, and courts have been pretty strong, so we still hold out hope that we can get this done,” Cooper told EdNC.
He called the commission’s recommendations from 2020 a “roadmap.”
“We just got to keep fighting,” he said. “And I think Governor-elect Stein understands that.”
Leaving with hope
After Cooper listed Tuesday what he views as recent shortcomings of education policy, he returned to a common thread in his education speeches over the last eight years.
“I am a positive person,” Cooper told the crowd. “I am a prisoner of hope.”
“Sorry, all you great teachers out there,” he said. “My mother was the greatest public school teacher in the history of North Carolina, and I’m deeply grateful for her work. And people still come up to me and say, ‘I want to pay you a compliment, and I’ll think it’s about me,’ and they’ll say, ‘Your mom was the greatest schoolteacher I ever had.'”
He attended public school, Cooper added, beginning at the school that kicked off his “Year of Public Schools” in January: Nashville Elementary in Nash County. He pointed to his own background, his mother’s lessons of service, as well as his children’s experiences in public schools, to demonstrate his belief in the power of public schools.
He said his school visits have been full of joy, no matter the tone of the public or political education conversation.
“I’ve seen the passion in the eyes of the teachers,” Cooper said. “I’ve seen the concerns on the brows of the principals and administrators. I’ve seen the energy and the dedication of parents and cafeteria workers and bus drivers and custodians and volunteers. And I have seen the future of North Carolina in the faces of thousands of girls and boys, young men and women. It gives me confidence. It gives me hope.”
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