Morrow promises audits if elected state public education chief

The Republican nominee for N.C. superintendent of public instruction said Thursday evening that if she wins the Nov. 5 general election, she and her team are going to have a financial audit conducted to figure out where money, including federal funding, is going.

Michele Morrow was the featured speaker at a Tar River Republican Women meeting at the Nashville Exchange Steakhouse & Cafe.

Morrow told the gathering she can guarantee there is money that is not going into the teachers’ pockets, into the school systems, to the schools’ resource officers and to anything helping schoolchildren to be academically successful.

“It’s going in to special interest groups. It’s going in to mandated programs,” Morrow said.

Morrow also said she believes that there needs to be a pushback against the U.S. Department of Education because the department is saying: “If you don’t do X, Y and Z, if you don’t have these numbers, if you don’t have your data look like this, you’re not going to get your check.”

Morrow said she is against those federal mandates.

“It’s time for us to say: We don’t want your dark money. We don’t want all the strings attached, the nooses attached. We’re going to take care of our education within the state,” Morrow said to applause.

Morrow also said that if she is elected she and her team are going to have programs audited.

“In my opinion, if you cannot prove that in the last five years you have statistically helped children be more academically successful, helped them in career preparedness or character development, then you cut that program,” she said.

“You might have started it for every good intention, right, but if it is not producing the results that you want, it’s time for us to stop dumping money into it and prioritize our funding and our classroom time on academics, character development and career preparedness,” she said.

She also said that if she is elected she wants to expand career and technical education and wants to work with businesses, particularly in rural areas.

“We need to go to businesses and say, ‘Hey, would you be willing to partner with us to have internships for juniors and seniors so they can do a work study program?’” she said.

Morrow made clear that she envisions students in such a program being able to go to school from 8 a.m.-noon and being able to work at businesses from 1-5 p.m. and for students having a career waiting for them at the end of two years.

She said that not only is this going to benefit businesses, but that this is also going to allow students to stay in the cities or towns they grew up in.

Morrow said that she wants the public schools in North Carolina to be like a football team, with the principal being the coach, the teachers being the assistant coaches, the students being the players and the family members being the booster club.

Morrow is a politically conservative activist, a nurse and a former missionary who in 2022 sought election to a seat on the school board in Wake County. Morrow upset first-term N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt in the March 5 GOP primary.

Morrow is facing Mo Green, who won a three-candidate March 5 Democratic primary. Green, an attorney by training, has served as superintendent of Guilford County Schools, as chief operating officer of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and as executive director of the Winston-Salem-based philanthropic Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Morrow also told the Tar River Republican Women club gathering that if she is elected, she believes the first thing that needs to be done is to bring safety and discipline back into the classrooms. Morrow drew applause for that statement.

Morrow said that there is a severe shortage of teachers and that she believes she knows why teachers are leaving the teaching profession.

“Would you want to go to work every day if you knew that you were going to be disrespected and cursed at, you were going to be threatened and, potentially, you were going to be assaulted?” Morrow said.

“And, by the way, when you’re assaulted, is there anyone that’s going to come and rescue you?” Morrow said.

She also said that if elected there needs to be a focus on academic excellence.

She said she believes there is no excuse for one out of every four eighth-graders in North Carolina public schools not being at grade level in mathematics, reading or science.

Morrow also fielded questions from the audience.

Nash County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robbie Davis, who also is a Republican, told Morrow that what he frequently hears about her is that she does not believe in public education.

“Why do we hear that and what is your answer to that question?” Davis asked.

Morrow and her family for a time lived in Texas. Morrow told the gathering that her children also attended public schools while in the Lone Star State.

Morrow said that the claim that she does not believe in public education gained traction because she home-schooled her children in North Carolina.

Morrow countered that claim by saying that she believes in public education so much she is willing to go in and try to change it for everyone else’s children.

Morrow also said that she believes the political left is all about protecting the system.

“We are all about the system serving the people of North Carolina — and there’s a very big difference,” she said. “I think they’re being threatened because I am not beholden to an education system that is failing — and I’m going to come in there with different ideas.”

Davis in an interview afterward said that he liked Morrow’s answer to his question.

Denise Watkins, co-owner of the Sky-Vue Skateland skating rink, spoke extensively with Morrow afterward.

“I think (Morrow) has the pulse of where our culture is for children today,” Watkins said in an interview after the gathering. “If children do not know how to behave, you cannot educate them.”