Green, Morrow battle for state superintendent
Mo Green (left), Michelle Morrow (right)
The race for state superintendent will determine who will support and advocate for the state’s 2,500 public schools and lead the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This election cycle, it also a race in which experience in public education is pitted against an outsider to the system.
Mo Green touts his experience in public education as foundational in preparing him to hold the office of state superintendent and the basis for his vision to improve the public school system.
Green was the superintendent of Guildford County Schools for seven and a half years and has also worked as the deputy superintendent, chief operating officer and general counsel for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. In 2015, he became Executive Director of Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds several education-related initiatives.
“I do believe that I am best equipped to be the chief administrative officer for public schools given my experience,” Green said. “I have extensive experience working directly with and on behalf of schools and leading complex educational organizations.”
But for Green’s opponent, Michelle Morrow, that experience is nothing more than a liability.
“He is an integral part of the failing, broken system,” Morrow said of Green.
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Morrow, a former nurse and homeschool teacher, beat first-term incumbent Catherine Truitt to become the Republican nominee for the race earlier this year. She beat Truitt by about four percentage points after casting herself as more conservative than Truitt.
Morrow has never held public office, or worked in public schools, but says that her experience as a mom with five children who have variously been enrolled in public, private and home schools, makes her the best candidate for the job.
“I’m the best person [for the job] because I’m not beholden to a system,” said Morrow. “I’ve already been successful as an outsider in changing things, in promoting the parental rights bill, I was talking to people throughout the state.”
Green and Morrow also diverge on the issue of funding public schools.
In September, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a mini budget that included $463 million to clear the waitlist of families that had applied for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program and provided voucher money for those attending private schools.
Last year, the General Assembly removed the income eligibility requirement, as well as the requirement that recipients must have previously attended public schools, for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program — a system that reimburses families with children attending private schools to help pay the cost of tuition and fees. This led to some 70,000 new applications for private school vouchers for the current 2024-25 school year, a more than 100% increase over the 2023-24 school year.
The bill provided enough funding to clear the 55,000-student waitlist at the cost of $463 million. It also increased the amount of funding the program will have in the future, from $625 million for the upcoming 2025-26 school year to $825 million for the 2032-33 school year. It will continue to be funded at that $825 million annual level thereafter.
Green was vehemently opposed to the bill, saying he believes “that it is taking money that could go into our public schools at a time when our public schools desperately need them.”
The bill passed a week after the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management released an analysis that estimated the new legislation would cause annual K-12 state spending to increase by a total of about $185 million. This represents a decrease of approximately $75 million to public schools and an increase to private schools of approximately $260 million.
“That’s real money. You think about what that looks like over 10 years, for example, and you’re talking about billions of dollars that could be utilized in our public schools,” said Green. “It is deeply troubling that these private school vouchers will allow the wealthiest of the wealthy to take advantage of these private school vouchers, many of whom already have their children in private schools and can afford them at the same time that we find ourselves woefully underfunded in public schools.”
Morrow supports the vouchers and sees them as benefitting competition between public and private schools.
“If you have a failing public school system, and your state is responsible for ensuring the sound, basic, moral education for every student, the real problem exists with the public school system,” said Morrow. “The question is, should parents have an option to send their children somewhere else if they are not getting an education, for whatever reason, if they feel like it’s going to be in their child’s best interest, they’re going to be more successful somewhere else. The question is, should they receive back their own tax money that they have paid into the system for their child to be successful? And my answer is absolutely. The money that we are spending on taxes is our money.”
“We need the competition, because it’s going to raise the bar for everybody — private, charter and public schools,” Morrow said. “When we make our public schools strong, when we have excellent academics, when we are producing young people who have strong work ethics and an ability to solve problems and to be critical thinkers, they’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow. So, you know what? Then the private schools are going to have to work even harder to get people from the public school to pay extra money to come to their school.”
Morrow not only disagrees with the notion that funding the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program will lead to money being taken away from the public school system, but also thinks funding is not necessarily the answer to the woes of the public school system.
“All he [Green] talks about is system, system, system and money, money, money,” said Morrow. “And money is important, but it is most important that we prioritize how we’re spending it.”
If Morrow is elected, she says the first thing she would do as state superintendent would be to get an outside entity to audit DPI’s finances to look at “what’s happening and where our funding is going.”
“There is an indirect relationship between the amount of money that we are sinking into our K-12 system and the literacy rates across all demographies [sic] of students,” said Morrow.
Green says he is determined to be not only chief administrative officer of public schools if elected, but also “chief advocacy officer.”
“The way that I advocate is to listen, learn and then lead on issues,” said Green. “I talk with folks, I try to bring other people in on the conversations and see if there aren’t ways for us to reach agreement, maybe not on everything, but on things that can move, in this instance, more funding forward in a positive way for public schools.”
Green contends that it is “deeply troubling” of his opponent to utilize the position of state superintendent to advocate, regardless of their personal position, for the taxpayer-funded private school voucher programs.
Both candidates have vowed to make school safety a top priority. For Morrow, the path to safe schools will take enhanced security — metal detectors, one way of entry to schools and video surveillance.
“One of the first things I did when I won the primary, within that first week, I started assembling a school safety advisory council for us to look at other states and to see who is doing this well,” said Morrow. “That’s going to be my number one priority as soon as I’m elected.”
Green has a four-pronged approach to the issue of school safety. First, he sees the need for more mental health professionals working with students. Second, he wants to build a more effective, stronger relationship with law enforcement. Third, he wants to “harden” facilities through double entry security systems, metal detectors at entry points and security cameras monitored in real time. And fourth, a focus on character development for students.
“Helping them understand how to be in relationship with other students, even when they’re in a disagreement with other students,” said Green. “This would address things that get to the core bullying issues as well.”
Beyond the policy issues at the heart of this race, both candidates are urging voters to consider core questions of character when considering who to vote for in the race for state superintendent of public schools.
“I am the best person because I’m not beholden to a system. I have no ties to any deep pockets, any political activist groups. I am doing this 100% for the students and the families of North Carolina, and that is who I’m going to represent, and that is who I’m going to be accountable to as superintendent,” said Morrow. “I am the one who had done this in my own time. I’ve already been successful as an outsider in changing things, in promoting the parental rights bill, I was talking to people throughout the state.”
“I’m the one who has the belief in our public schools,” Green said. “My wife and I, we had two children, we chose to put our children into our public schools. We believe in them. My opponent calls our public schools all sorts of things, cesspools of evil, lies and deception, taken over by Satan, calls our educators groomers. The list is long … What kind of character do we want next to them, leading our children?”
