Dunn: "NC is running a trust deficit with it public schools." (12-16-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to the program. Hope you're doing well. Thanks a lot for hanging out. And as we always do at noon on Tuesday, we check with Andrew Dunne. He is the publisher of long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com, and he's also a contributing columnist at The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, how are you, sir? I'm doing well, just trying to stay. Warm over here. Yeah, that's kind of brutal, but I mean I think, like tomorrow it'll be like ninety and then the day after that it's twelve. So yeah, right, all right, And just from a quick programming standpoint, I am off next week, so I release you of your duty to carve out time for us. On do you just ruin my whole Tuesday. I somehow doubt that, Andrew. I appreciate that, but I doubt it. I think you'll be freed up now. You can enjoy your lunch break without any show prep. So let's talk a little bit about education. I thought you had a great line. You got two different pieces here on the education front, one from a week ago and then the other from just a couple of days ago. But you said in the Charlotte Observer, North Carolina is running a trust deficit with its public schools, and it's getting worse. But I want to start with the piece that you have at Long Leave Politics, where you talked about and I was actually going to ask you about this last week, but we ran out of time. But a bedtime chat with your daughter sent you down an educratic rabbit hole to try to try to answer the question of why your daughter said, oh, yeah, she knows about Christopher Columbus. He's a bad guy. He abused the Native people. This is our answer to when you asked what she learned in school today about Columbus Day and you get to a thing, and this is one of the it's one of my beefs with the public schools system, and a lot of people who are in it is that there is this either refusal to admit or there's just ignorance that schools are where we in America have for generations transmitted our norms, our shared American identity. This is the schools. That's where that has occurred, not you know, only in schools, but that's been the driving force for this stuff, this handing down of the stories. And stories are very powerful things. So after your daughter says this, you start looking into like, what exactly are they teaching? And did you get any answers? No, I don't really have any answers. You know, Unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot more visibility into what's actually happening within the schools. Even with the Parents' Bill of Rights that passed two years ago. I've tried to get more of a window into what's happening, but haven't really had a whole lot of success. But yeah, on the column, you know, I don't want to make a really big deal about that individual circumstance. You know, whatever comment that it was by the school librarian, you know, that's neither here nor there at this point, I guess, But you know, The bigger point that I'm trying to make is, you know, when are we as a state as a nation going to think more seriously or and talk more seriously about what are we teaching our young children about historical events, and especially as it pertains to the founding of the United States. You know, there's a whole generation of folks who have grown up now in today's education system that really takes the more Howard Zen and oppressor versus a press view of history. And I think I don't see how we as a country can succeed moving forward if that is what we're you know, and doctrinating our young people into. No, if you teach the kids that everything is inherently bad about the country in which they live, then it's not surprising that they want to, uh dare I say, fundamentally transform it into something else? And this isn't And we should also point out here, as you do in the piece, you know, there is a there is a difference between what you're teaching kids in the younger younger grades versus the older grades. Right, this is a it's it needs to be a step process. Right exactly. And that's kind of how I was thinking about it. You know, I was thinking through, all right, so what what do I want my eight year old to know about Christopher Columbus? And you know, I'm not one hundred percent sure. I'm not a Colombian historian. Unfortunately I probably should be. But I have to say that the one thing if my eight year old knows one thing about Columbus, that he's an evil villain is probably not it. I mean, that's just as simplistic as as saying, you know, he's a conquering hero who discovered America. You know, both, you know, are not one hundred percent accurate, but the villain narrative is just as damaging. Yeah, I heard there was a watch an interview and I had never realized this, but apparently Columbus set sail off to the quote New World right to try to go around the other direction because of the because of the conquering by Islam that had cut off the entire European area in Spain from all of the existing Christendom countries that have been that had fallen over centuries, and so they had to go so they had to find a different way to avoid the piracy, to avoid Yeah, and like I'm fifty two years old, I just learned that like a month ago. I had no idea about that aspect of the you know, the exploration into the New World to try to find another route across the country. But yeah, and all right, so then you mentioned the Parents' Bill of Rights also, and everybody was talking about this House Oversight Committee at the state legislature where they brought in the chairman and the superintendent of Chapel Hill, Carborough Schools because the chairman of the school board, George Griffin, had made comments publicly during a board meeting about how they probably weren't going to adhere to the state law the Parents' Bill of Rights. And this is the quote that I read earlier from your piece where that the state is running a trust deficit with its public schools and it's getting worse. So you talk about this cycle, it just kind of reinforces itself where the district acts badly, people then don't trust it, and then it just keeps kind of going in this cycle. So how do you break out of that cycle? Gosh, if I had the answer to that, I probably would have a whole lot of money. But yeah, I mean it's difficult because this hearing that happened last week came at the same time that the state Department of Public Instruction was putting out new numbers on enrollment in school districts across North Carolina. And you know, there was a huge dip, a huge decline in enrollment in twenty twenty, you know, when COVID shut down all the schools. People were trying to find different options. But in a lot of our big urban school districts Charlotte's one of them, Wait Counties one of them, Orange County is one of them, those numbers are continuing to go down. So it's clear that there's a large segment of the population that just doesn't trust the public school system. And so you know, Democrats will often say, well, you know, if there's problems with the school system, it's just because you're not paying teachers enough. You're not putting enough money into it. And I've had conversations with legislators who are somewhat sympathetic to that argument. You know, they say, yes, teachers do need to get paid more, but they're trying to make the case to their colleagues in the General Assembly to raise teacher pay. And then it comes out that you know, teachers are reading some of these, you know Stantsa's husband books to the classroom, and it just makes people want to throw up their hands and say, well, I'm not going to give them more money. And so I honestly I don't know which side needs to change first. I mean probably I would have to say it has to start at the school district level, that we need to see some more good faith efforts to get back to fundamentals of education, and then we can pour more money into the system. Well, yesterday I talked about some there was a report I think it was at the Atlanta and it was looking at a couple of colleges and how unprepared their students are, their freshmen or first year, first yearers or whatever they call them now because you can't say freshmen, so whatever. Yeah, and so there they had to put like I think it was something like nine hundred of their freshmen at UC Davis, nine hundred of the freshmen had to go through remedial math because they didn't know they weren't even at a middle school level in math. And this is the problem. It's like, why would we fund more of this? That's certainly you're not making the argument that the teachers aren't teaching math because they're not being paid enough. Right, that's certainly not the argument. So what is the argument that I need to throw a bunch more money and get worse outcomes year over year over year. And particularly when you've seen the enrollment declines as we have seen over the last few years too, it seems like people are rejecting what you're what the public schools are offering. Right, You're exactly right, And that's I mean, it's wild how unprepared students are graduating from from high schools. And it's hard because I feel like the root of so many of our problems can't be solved by government. I mean, the real problem is the decline in family structure in North Carolina and in America, and the decline and you know, and people wanting to prioritize family life and raising kids. And I'm not sure exactly how we go about changing that, but it's certainly not going to come by, you know, increasing per pupil spending. Yeah, well, it's it's sort of like the the Brookings Institute report from gosh, i don't know, probably about twenty years ago now, where they said, like, if you want to stay out of poverty or get out of poverty, have a job, any job, graduate high school, and don't have kids before you graduate high school, and get married. Like that's those are the three things and government doesn't do any of that. Government can't do any of those things, right, That's all societal norms. It's culture, it's family, it's civic engagement. That's where you learn those things. And like that was the Brookings Institute saying government's not doing it. Right, and why isn't that this success sequence? I mean, that's what should be taught in public schools. There should be a whole whole course just around that until people until it's thinks in. Yeah, yeah's. It seems like like we know these things, these recipes for success, and yet we don't seem to do a good job of conveying them to younger kids. Like life is hard, you're gonna have struggles, you're gonna have obstacles. You got to overcome them. It doesn't mean you're oppressed, right, It doesn't mean somebody is keeping you from your from your dream. It just means you need to find a different way to get it. Yeah, Like I don't I don't know why we don't do more of that. But maybe, okay, maybe this is my bias, but I suspect it has more to do with my belief is the problem with the public school system is the model. I just I don't believe the model works. If it ever did, really, I don't think it works, especially absent the family participation. So yeah, I don't know. So it's to me. It's not an easy answer, but vouchers were my that was my compromise position. Yeah, hugely important. You know, we're kind of descending into grumpy old man tari. I know, I think we're absolutely right. I know, well, you know what, ba humbug, But you know whatever, I'm off next week, so I'll get the Christmas spirit next week. I guess there we go. Yeah, Andrew, I was appreciated. Thank you for all of your contributions to the show this year. I do appreciate that as well. Much success in twenty twenty six to you as well, sir. Thank you. Likewise, all right, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, and you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more trans parent. So in his piece Andrew Dunn wrote over at The Charlotte Observer, he quoted state Representative Mike Sheetzelt, who called the public school funding and lack of confidence in the public schools a chicken and egg problem, right, what came first? The chicken or the egg kind of thing. Parents don't trust that school leaders will respect basic boundaries or tell the truth until they are forced to do so. Lawmakers don't trust that districts will use new resources wisely or stay within the lines they have been given, and teachers don't trust that the legislature has their backs. And each group uses the other's worst behavior to justify its own, And the more that cycle spins, the more families head for the exits. Public schools are losing students, they're losing teachers and losing the benefit of the doubt. If that continues, he said, the big debates over teacher pay, school choice, what belongs in a second grade classroom, all of that will be beside the point. There won't be much of a common system left to argue over and again. My bias here is that I don't think the government school model works. It may have, and you know, I'm a product of public schools, but I'm a gen xer, and I think public schools are different now. But I think people have an idea of what they think public schools, you know, are teaching, and what's going on in the schools now, and they base that on what it was like for them when they were in school. But I can tell you like I did not. I mean I did well with grades. I was always I did very well in the testing. I did very well, you know, doing my assignments and all of that. But I was bored, absolutely bored, and then I became disruptive. This may be a surprise to some people to learn that I would. I would make jokes and stuff in the classroom. I frequently had you know, straight a's, But then I would have is disruptive in class speaks at inappropriate times. The writing was on the wall. It's a factory model. The government school system is a factory model based off the Prussian model. And it's fine if you're cranking out factory workers. I guess that need to know just enough English words so they can, you know, not sever their limbs in the machinery. But as the founder of the system said, we are not intending to create men of letters. That's not the point. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins of Ashville and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let's jump over to the phones and chat with Zario. Welcome to the show, Zaria. Yes, hello, Yes, you are live on the air. Gotcha. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of insight because I am a school teacher, and I know a lot of times it's easy for people to assume things, but a lot of times they aren't actually in the school system, so they're seeking off of opinions and not necessarily facts. When it comes to teacher pay, I think that each year more things are required for teachers, more training. I think that teachers would just like to be able to be paid for the work that they do at home, or be paid for the training that is mandatory out side of hours that they wouldn't get paid for. I also think that when people talk about the school system and the children aren't prepared for college and different things like that, they are failing to realize that class numbers continue to grow. I know personally at my school one of the teachers has over forty children in her classroom. What grade level is that? This is high school and a lot more people are leaving education and fewer people are, you know, actually pursuing education as a career. Therefore, a lot of time in classrooms there aren't teachers. There are long term subs there, and these are people who may not even have a college degree responsible for teaching your child a curriculum. And so, for one, funding has always been an issue. Each year, I know that they have cut more and more funding from our programs and we have less and less funding to work with. I mean, it even comes down to behavior, right, Like the larger the class sizes are, the harder it is to maintain a safe classroom environment. And really a lot of school systems should have alternative schools to help with those children who are high behavioral needs, but there's not funding for it. So a lot of the time that should be used towards teaching and instruction is really being used as redirecting for behavior incidents. So, yeah, Zaria, everything that you have said, I have heard from teachers for twenty five years. Okay, I've covered schools, covered the Charla Mecklberg school system for twenty years. All of those things that you've said are things that teachers have said. And my family members who are teachers, they all say the same things as well. To me, that is further evidence everything you've just laid out is further evidence that the model doesn't work. The model is, in my view, the problem is the model. It is a massive government bureaucracy, the explosion of administrative positions rather than teacher positions. That's that's part of the reason why you're seeing all of the cram downs of you know, paperwork and trainings and all of this stuff. I've said for years that truly great teachers, I would want them to make six figures, but I'm not. But I'm not going to pay the bad teachers the same amount of money. So until the education establishment is able to figure out some way to identify good teachers from the bad ones and then to pay the good ones more money, like I'm not going to be I'm not going to be pressured into funding terrible teachers because everybody knows you and you do too. You know who are the good teachers in your school and who aren't the good teachers? Right, the kids know, the parents know. Everybody has gone to school and had good teachers and bad ones. So I would like to pay the good ones a lot more money, but I don't want to have to pay the bad ones the same amount. I find that to be kind of demoralizing for the good ones. Right, So what I've always been met with whenever I say this, though, is that there's no way that the schools are able to differentiate. There's no way that they could do that, which I don't believe. Yeah, I don't believe that's the goods. So each each year we well for one, each teacher has to give observed minimum three times of the years, and with each observation is a whole list of things that are being looked for for the observation. There have been teachers who have been put on like plans, basically saying like, your teaching is not up to par. These are the things that need to be fixed by the end of the year or you will be asked to leave. So there's definitely ways to determine good teachers from bad teachers. You know, there are teachers who get fired or asked to not come back or different things like that. But I mean, really, at any job, right, there's always going to be really great workers, and there are also going to be people who don't work as hard or you know, find loopholes. But I think we have to say that, like, as a country we value education, because right now, the way that the school system is, it's showing kids that they don't like. It's showing that the country doesn't value education. So all right, I'm going to so I'm going to disagree with you on that, and I'm going to cite budgets as okay, because if you look at the budget, what we spend our money on. The number one expenditure at the state level is education. The number one budget, the largest budget locally is the school district budget. I think it's two point two billion at this point, right and we have fewer kids now than we have had. I mean we're down to like twenty ten numbers. Like the school the student population is lower than it's been in fifteen years. So we're spending billions of dollars on education. So I would submit that that is proof that as a society, we're plowing a ton of money into education. The problem is the results aren't there. The results get worse and worse. So what's what's the problem. Oh, I think my rebuttal for that is, first, you know, we can say that we spend this much on education, but we also have to look at Okay, within that budget, where is the money going. So I think that that's something that needs to be looked into. I agree, that's that was my comment about it. The administrative bloat, all of the administrative positions that are getting funded. Absolutely, it's not going towards you know, teaching, it's not going towards teacher pay. I'll say, sometimes things get spent on, Oh, it's teacher appreciation week. Let's let's have a catered meal for the teachers, when really you can ask any teacher, we rather just have more money per month because every teacher I know works multiple jobs and I don't think that that's fair. I personally work three. As far as what is the issue and why we aren't seeing results, I have to say something, and I don't know if people are gonna like it, but I'm here to be honest. A lot of it is accountability from the parents. Parents lots of times expect us to not only teach their children content, but to raise their kids as well, and lots of times our time is spent teaching children how to. Behave, how to behave yes, and how to get along well with others instead of actually teaching them the content and and lots of times. Anytime that I do hold my kids accountable, I do have a lot of pushback from parents. For instance, I don't accept late work in my classroom. The reason for that being is that the work that I give my kids, I give them two weeks to complete it, and I give them class time to do it. Argument is this, you know, you have to have time management, and I teach them time management skills. But I also say, hey, if if Miss Franklin is laid on her bills, that's a penalty. Right, you know what I mean? Life is deadline. Yeah, life is full of deadlines that you have to meet. Deadlines, absolutely, and I am trying to prepare them for the real world in college. Therefore, you know, in college, if you miss the deadline, you miss the deadline. But I have had a lot of pushback from parents on that. Yeah, I'm sure saying that I. Need to give their child more time. It's not fair. They weren't at school the day it was due, and I'm just thinking, well, this assignment's been to do for two weeks and they could have submitted it at home, you know what I mean. Yeah, So. That's one thing. Another thing is pushed back with IPS. I don't know if you're familiar with what. IEPs are, visual plans. Uh and individual education plans. IEPs can be based off of behavior. It can say, you know, this child struggles with reading, they need to have extra time on this assignment, or you know, it's a specific plan for a child to be successful in school. The whole purpose of this is to act as as support but not a crutch. You have parents who want to continue to keep their children on their IEP plan until they graduate. But I say this, I'm like, you know, I know your child struggles with behavior, but guess what when they're eighteen and they get pulled over by the police, there's no red folder that tells the police, Hey, this child struggles with this, this, and this, you know what I mean. Or when you go to a job, it's not oh, you get extra time to complete this yeah, because. You know yeah, Zaria, Yeah, I appreciate the call. I've got to leave it there. Thank you for the insight, of course, all right, take care. Yeah. I think one last point is something Thatsarria said there is that a lot of parents do turn their kids over to be raised by the government and its education officials. But that was also part of the sales pitch that was made to parents thirty years ago. Right, that's when schools started doing more and more and more things wrap around services. They started doing all of this stuff, so parents received that message that turn your kid over to us will basically raise them with the character, education and all of that stuff. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot Com. Let me jump over here and get Mitch on the program. Hello, Mitch, Hey, Hey, what's say? I'll just sit on one of the things. My wife's been teaching for forty years, so I've heard a lot about teaching over thirty. Some of you a marriage. I understand that it's very difficult to create any type of metrics to judge teachers. They don't they're not creating widgets. My wife will tell you that she's had classes that make it very easy on her and make her look good, and she's had classes that make it next time possible for her to look good. I believe that there's no way a bureaucrat sitting in Raleigh can can deal with that and pay the good teachers and not pay the bad ones. And I'll tell you it frustrates me to no end that my wife, who works very, very very hard at her job, makes the same thing as people who just do enough. Not to get fired. And that is true I believe the principles need I have a lot of autonomy, and who gets paid in their schools. They're the only ones. Who can really make that type of a judgment. And I think that's they're never going to work out any process like that until they give that type of responsibility to Yeah. No, Mitch, that's an idea that I kicked around a decade ago. And yet when I would talk about this idea, like giving principles, hiring, firing, wage setting, all of that, giving them those responsibilities, letting them actually run their schools, you know who you know who objected? You know who opposed it? Teachers? They didn't. They because they don't, because because they all have had they've all had a principle that they did not get along with and they don't want to. Yeah, and they don't. And that was what I said. Yeah, that's what I said too, But it just the opposition. It all came from the teachers. Yeah, Mitch, I appreciate the call, sir. Yeah, I mean there are there are creative ideas that exist if you're trying to save this government run system, and I'm open to you testing them out, you know, seeing school districts do so but but we just get more of the same. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.