- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up, the debate over student loan forgiveness, North Carolina education leaders propose a new way to become a teacher, and the GOP cuts ties with the presidential debate commission, next.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/fronrow.

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back, joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai, with the John Locke Foundation, Republican State Senator Vickie Sawyer, Democratic State Senator Sydney Batch and Donna King with the John Locke Foundation.

Donna, let's begin with a debate over student loan forgiveness.

- Sure, well we've been talking about this for some time, actually.

There's been a pause on student loan repayment since Donald Trump was president.

He instituted a pause during COVID and then when President Joe Biden took office, he continued that pause.

The next one runs out August 31st and it's time to make a decision one way or another.

The President has indicated that he may be in favor of forgiving up to $10,000 dollars in student loans.

This would affect about 40 million recent graduates, people who are in the process of repaying loans.

- [Marc] About a trillion dollars of money, right?

- We're talking about a trillion dollars and that's one of the questions.

How much would this really cost?

How many people would be affected?

This is an ongoing issue.

Representative Virginia Fox, who represents North Carolina in Congress, is the leading Republican on the House Education Committee.

She says that this really is outrageous.

We're talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars to repay, and forgive the debt on the student loan.

It doesn't just evaporate.

That loan will come from the federal government.

And it doesn't indicate what would happen to folks who either bypass college, went to a community college because they just couldn't afford the Delta between $10,000 and the full cost of college, or those who slow-rolled their college education because they worked and paid as they went long.

So there's lots of outstanding questions, but right now Democrats are telling the president that he needs to do something about this because his poll numbers among this demographic are underwater - Sydney, you have the floor.

- It's interesting that you talk about that as well because it's not just the individuals that went to community college.

It's also individuals like me, who are 17 years into still paying off my student loans.

Right?

So there are individuals who are still paying forward and have made the sacrifices to not pay as much into retirement or other things in the course of the time to pay off their student loans.

There is a really popular idea about income-based repayment.

So if you actually make a certain amount, after 10 years it's forgiven.

That's much more popular.

It has bipartisan support.

I think we should look at that instead of just canceling outright student loan debt.

- [Marc] Well, Vickie, is this fair to the kids that worked their way through college?

- Well, as someone sitting here who did pay back her student loan debt, I don't know that it is.

But there is a private market solution to it that came out during the Cares Act that I really am a big fan of.

And that's that an employer can pay up to $5,250 dollars towards their student loan at a tax free status.

I think we should probably lift that and make that a larger amount that they can pay.

I think it's a great private-market solution to a private problem.

- Mitch, critics say, Biden's trying to buy younger voters votes.

- Shock that the president [panelists laughing] would try to come up with policies that will help.

- [Marc] He's not doing very well with that demographic.

- He isn't, he's not doing that well with that demographic.

And as, you know, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the president or other politicians will try to come up with policies that will appeal to particular groups.

The main problem with this one is that the people who benefit the most are the people who took out big loans to go to grad school.

We're not talking about helping the people who are at the lowest end of the income scale.

If you wanna do something to help them, canceling college debt is not the way to go.

- Donna, taxpayers take it on a chin.

- Absolutely.

Well, plus you also have a lot of parents who may have taken loans out on behalf of their children.

They wouldn't apply to them.

We're really talking about student repayment.

So there's a lot of moving parts in this, and there is not a one-size-fits-all stamp on this.

And really we're gonna have to learn something over the summer because something has to be done by August 31st or they can just extend it again.

- Do you think he'll extend it again?

- You know, it may be.

I think so.

I think that there's not enough people in any one camp on this particular issue.

So the easiest thing to do would be to extend it again, but even that is $200 million dollars for the taxpayers.

- But the AOCs and left wing of the party are really pressing him on this.

- They are, they're pressing him for loan forgiveness.

But you know, that's their base too.

You know, they wanna look like they made this happen for their constituents, because a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle are concerned about that young vote and voter turnout in '22 and '24 - Vicki, wrapped this up in about 40 seconds.

- Well, excited to see what's going on, but I don't know if any of you around the table have ever kicked the can down the road when you were paying back an a loan.

It never works out well.

So if you're sitting here listening to this, make your loan payments, even though they're not due.

To make sure that you can ensure your financial future for your family.

- Okay, I wanna move on, come right back to you and talk to you.

There may be a new way that teachers enter the workforce in North Carolina.

- This is very interesting and exciting approach to how we attract, retain and promote professional development among teachers.

So I told you, I just paid back my student loan debt, but I was a North Carolina teaching fellow, and chose not to take the classroom.

But in that time, and since then, the only way to advance in the career is to go into administration.

Well, you're losing a lot of qualified, amazing teachers, just because they wanna make sure that they can make more money for their family and be an effective principal as well.

So this new idea.

It's not really new, but it's a kind of a format of, it's been in a nice format to say that, "Hey, if you are a new teacher "And you didn't come through a four year degree, "We're gonna give you an apprenticeship program "And we're gonna pitch you on."

And then there's four different, or seven different levels of that kind of teacher accreditation that you can have.

And you can choose your path as a teacher as to where you wanna go.

I did talk to some people at DPI.

They caution, they said this is just a proposal.

There is nothing there.

I have spoken to some teacher friends.

They were nervous about the EVAAS system and making it, you know, their pay indicating on their students' success.

The one thing that I do wanna note is no teacher in this model will actually lose pay.

- Mitch, you followed this story.

- Yeah, this is very interesting in a number of respects.

The number one thing about this to me, that's great is that it would break the Education School monopoly.

I mean, we've had teachers since we've had people on this planet, but at some point someone decided that the only way to become a teacher in the school was to have to go through a college education school.

And we know that that's not the only way that people can learn how to be a teacher.

So we have, as was mentioned, seven different ways that you could get in, starting from an apprentice, who would make about $30,000 a year, up to a person who goes through the four-year program and could make starting out $45,000 a year, not bad.

So you would have also these seven different ways of having licenses.

The first few only last for a few years, so if you get into teaching, and it's determined that you're not very good, you won't get another license, and that will weed out the bad teachers.

I remember reading in the past, that that's one of the best things about improving public schools, is to get rid of the bad teachers.

Rewarding the good teachers is great.

Get rid of the bad teachers is even better.

- Have you spoken out, Donna?

- So, I think it's interesting because we've talked a lot about public education, particularly in COVID.

But what we really found out in a very quick time is we need a paradigm shift.

The existing system is a century old, and change is difficult.

Changes can be exciting.

It can also be stressful, but at the end of the day, this is not compensating based on test scores.

There's really lots of ways to be successful and to be a great teacher and to bring your skills, wherever you got them originally, and bring them to the next generation.

- Sydney, put this in context.

- Yes, I agree with Donna.

I mean, we are at a point where it is an antiquated system.

The way we fund public schools is antiquated, the way that we pay teachers in general.

I think one of the things that hasn't been part of this discussion that needs to at least be lifted up is the fact that teachers aren't just frustrated about just the salary.

Yes, they want to get paid more, but they're frustrated about the fact that they have to be the nurse, that they gotta learn how to use an EpiPen 'cause we don't have enough nurses in our schools, that they have to be the school counselor, that they have to be the social worker.

So if we actually fund schools, and we have more social workers and more mental health professionals in schools, they can actually do what they went to school for and teach.

So I think at this point, we have to work on not just what we do with regards to salaries and retaining great teachers.

The way that a lot of them are leaving the system is simply because they're overwhelmed with all the other jobs that they never signed up to do in the first place.

- Vickie, what's the next steps?

- Well, next steps is to continue to discuss the process.

The board of a education just heard this initially, and then they're gonna have to move formally on it.

I am excited about this conversation.

I think it is a change, and I'm grateful for that.

There is some things that local schools districts have done to help alleviate that stress on teachers, which is to bring private market into the schools and set up nursing stations or psychologists that can come in.

And you can actually bill Medicaid, right?

And get paid for those services right there on campus.

- Great conversation.

We need to move on.

Let's talk about the RNC and the Presidential Debate Commission.

Looks like they're getting a divorce.

- That's right.

[all laugh] The Republican National Committee, which is a group of 168 people.

It's not just a handful of folks.

It's a lot of people, voted unanimously this month to get out of this Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization that was set up in 1987.

So, put that in context.

This is not something that started with the founders.

This is something that came about near the end of Ronald Reagan's second term.

It was an idea of, let's put some formality into this process of debates that wasn't there before.

But, basically, Republican leaders have said, look, this group has turned out to be kind of biased, and it isn't accepting of some necessary reforms, like making sure that you have debates, oh, before people start to vote.

And so they voted unanimously to step away from this Committee on the Presidential Debates.

Now, Democrats, of course, have said, look, Republicans are trying to hide from the voters.

That's why they're doing this.

But Ronna McDaniel, who's the chair of the RNC, says, no, we wanna come up with new platforms, new ways of doing this and not tie it to this group that hasn't turned out to be exactly what we expected.

- Well, when I worked for Reagan in 1980, we negotiated directly with Carter.

Have the moderators become the issue now?

Are they overshadowing the candidates you think, Vickie?

- Yeah, I do.

As someone who's watched it all the way growing up, it does seem like they are putting their thumb on the scale on some certain things.

Now, arguably, when Trump was following Hillary Clinton around the stage, some people say that he was the one that was the show there, but it seems like it's gotten progressively- - Well, he's always the show.

- He is always, that's right.

That's right, I forget.

- Love him or hate him, right?

- Yeah, right, exactly, but I can understand this criticism and wanting to have a fair playing field.

And we hear a lot or much to do about Ted Budd not being at any of the debates recently.

And it actually seems like to be helping him because he's getting more play than the actual, the folks that show up.

- Why not just go back, Sydney, to the Nixon-Kennedy debates, way before your time, but where they just had a timekeeper?

- Yeah, no, I do think that there's a benefit with regards to the timekeeper.

I think this is a loss for democracy if we can't find a solution with regards to how you get two of the people that are going to be running the country.

You have a choice, a very clear choice.

We need to have the ability to have them in the same room sitting down and debating the same questions and not being able to, of course, cater it to one end or the other.

And, frankly, Democrats have complained also about the Presidential Debate Commission as well.

So it's both sides being frustrated.

What I hope is that they sit down, and they say, you know what?

We need to come up with a solution because American people deserve to hear from both of the presidential candidates.

- Donna, this has sort of become like a game show, hasn't it?

- Sure, sure it has, but I do think it's important not just in the general and the primary election.

Debates are important, and polls have shown, recent polls out now say 75% of primary voters say that they think that debates are somewhat to very important.

And particularly when you look at that primary voter, a primary voter is very active.

They know the policy.

They know what they're listening for.

They're not a general-election-only type of voter.

So, I think debates become even more important in the primary.

- But you know what I think, Mitch, I think some of these presidential debates have just become a sideshow.

I mean, really they've just become a sideshow, and there's not been much substance.

- They certainly have, certainly the ones where you have a bunch of candidates, and no one really gets to say much of anything.

- [Marc] It's like a game show.

- That's how Donald Trump really got his footing, was that he was the one guy who didn't look like everyone else.

He was the one talking a little bit differently, and that started the snowball for him.

But I think there is going to be a need to come up with something, even if you don't have this particular committee and commission, that we have debates and that we have people have a chance to learn about what these candidates really stand for.

- Well, you could have a group, Vickie, like the League of Women voters sponsor it, but you negotiate directly with the other candidate.

I think that might work.

- It could work.

I always bring back politics to local, and someone who has been in those debates in a local setting, it can be weighed one way or the other and skewed.

So it is something that needs to be like, to Senator Batch's point, discussed.

And it is a responsibility for us who are elected to speak to those directly in a debate forum.

- Okay, I wanna move on and talk about the governor and his climate change goals, Sydney.

- Yeah, so in January of this year, the governor signed another executive order.

It's 264.

It had dealt with some of the things that he addressed last year in the executive order, but it hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It also wants to get 1.25 million of EV vehicles on the roads.

It also is directing actually the state agencies and the Department of Transportation to work on coming up with an infrastructure plan and how we're going to have all of these EV vehicles on the roads but not have charging stations.

And so he's asked for them to do that.

We are on track for some of those goals, especially with regards to the 50% of usage of EV cars that are purchased by 2030, we are falling short with the greenhouse gas admissions right now, that reduction is supposed to be by 2025, 40%.

We are more on track to doing it by 2030.

The good news is, is that we're making progress.

And I think that's what's really important in this matter.

And then one of the other things that we need to, of course, look at is making sure that we aren't just having executive orders that are addressing this space, the General Assembly in a overwhelmingly and bipartisan fashion actually pass legislation with regards to a clean energy bill and a energy bill in general, in the long session.

And we need to of course, go back to the General Assembly and ask for them to go ahead and start, you know, for us to work together on other additional measures that we can of course support the executive order.

- Talk to us about what the General Assembly did in regard to climate change.

- Yeah, so we did go into that bipartisan legislation, like she was saying, and something I've been personally working on is, yes, these climate change and these EV in the executive order, that's here, it's to stay, but how are we gonna pay for it all?

So, that has been very concerning for me.

You know, North Carolina funds it's transportation off 50% from the gas tax.

So I appreciate EVs.

I think they're cool.

I mean, I enjoy having them on the roads.

- Are they practical now at this point, you think?

- Well, that's something else that a coalition of utility companies are getting together to try to develop a plan, especially across the Southeast, to make sure there's strategic points for EV charging stations.

Again, how do we collect tax on that?

How do we make sure that we're funding our roads?

And we gotta make sure that transportation system is here for the future as well.

- Mitch, is the Governor playing to a larger audience when he talks about climate change?

- To some extent I think he is, but I think that he is interested in this issue as a North Carolina issue.

- It a top tier issue for North Carolinians?

- I don't believe that it is, especially right now the top issues are inflation, jobs in the economy, education, election integrity.

We just did a poll- - Immigration.

- Immigration was actually a little bit lower, about at the same level as energy and the environment, but those are top tier issues.

I think to me, the most interesting thing is, North Carolina could do all at once to deal with these issues.

It's not going to make a dent by itself on the climate.

I mean, so, whether you like these ideas or not, North Carolina by itself is going to have an almost infinitesimal impact on the climate.

- Donna.

- Well, I mean, I think that exactly what everyone has said, that we need to have a larger conversation about energy policy, not just going down these, you know, one off policies, we're getting a bunch of money through the American Rescue Plan for EV charging stations, all of these, you know, individual projects work well, but we need a larger conversation about- - How is it impacting the economy right now?

Particularly with Biden.

- Well, right now I think that most people aren't really paying attention.

They're looking at the price of gas.

They're looking at the price of groceries.

They're looking at, you know, the historic inflation.

Those are the big issues right now.

If we're gonna talk about energy policy, you can't talk about, you know, clean energy without really talking about nuclear energy.

There's lots of other things that- - Well, fossil fuels, right?

- There's lots of other pieces that need to be a part of this conversation, not just individual projects.

- Wrap this up in about 50 seconds.

- I will say that one of the interesting parts is that EV sales have gone through the roof since gas prices have gone up.

And so the demand is there, it's whether or not we have the infrastructure that we have to that.

What I will say is that in actually reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, if you don't care about the economy, if you don't care about the government, you should care about, or I'm sorry, the Earth, we should care about the economy, because just by cutting the usage on state buildings, we saved last year, $138 million in the UNC system alone and 23 million from state agencies with regards to that, and that's money that can go to transportation.

- Before I wrap it, but don't fossil fuels need to be part of this conversation?

- Certainly they have to be for the foreseeable future.

You have to have fossil fuels.

There are going to be alternatives that'll come about, but fossil fuels have to be part of the picture.

- Okay, I wanna move on and go to the most underreported story of the week, Mitch.

- New research from scholars at some big name schools like Stanford and the University of Chicago have just released a new report that says that 3 million workers are going to be permanently sidelined because of their concern about the potential health problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These researchers are calling this long social distancing.

They say that more than 10% of Americans who worked in 2019 are going to continue to work from home, not in an office setting because of their concerns about the pandemic.

Another 45% are going to engage in limited social distancing.

This is most common among women, older folks, those with less education and those with less income, that less education, less income, I think is gonna be one of the hardest parts about this.

'Cause those are the folks who need the jobs.

It has lowered our labor force participation by about two and a half points, that could have some long-term impacts - Vicky.

- Underreported, not underreported as CRT in the classroom, but underreported is actually proof that it exists.

So we saw a report come out of Wake county.

This actually, Tuesday, where the board had voted to a high school to have six teachers go to UNC Charlotte, actually my alma mater to receive training.

Now the funding is coming from a group that has been historically working to get CRT in the classroom.

In fact, they've been quoted to say the purpose of this event that they had been a part of is to allow for CRT framework to make sure that they achieve this goal.

- Explain what CRT is, please.

- Well, it depends on perspective of what it is to be quite honest with you, that's actually- - [Host] Critical race theory, though, is what- Yeah, so, critical race theory is what they are saying.

And some folks are saying it's being rebranded as culturally responsive teaching where there's a backlash to saying that that's just a CRT rebranded.

- Is this about parental rights in your view?

- A little bit.

I just think it's a hot button issue that needs to be discussed.

And it is really being folded into all of these parental rights issues.

I'm hearing from parents, especially now, since I'm at homes a lot more, is that they just want transparency.

They wanna know what's going on and then they can choose which school that is right for their child, based on what they know they're receiving and education they get there - Sydney.

- With the celebration of Earth Day, my underreported is actually that in certain parts of the world, we are headed for an insect apocalypse.

Now some people- [everyone laughing] I mean, I don't like it.

I was gonna say, I don't like any mosquitoes just like the next person, but actually why it's really important is that insects are 75% of the insect pollinators for what we need with our crops.

And so what they've said is that the Journal of Nature ended up doing looked at 20 years of data in 6,000 different locations with 18,000 different insects and species.

And what they found is that, in that amount of time with less climate change, and then also with less mass agricultural right farming, modern day farming, there's a 6% reduction in insects.

But in the areas where there was a high level of increase in temperatures, but then also with mass agricultural production, it was a 63% decrease.

And at the end of the day, we're gonna be in a situation where if we don't address the fact that we need insects to continue to pollinate our crops, we will not be able to feed the 7.5 billion individuals on this planet.

And certainly, we'll lose crops such as strawberries and other things that we hold near and dear.

- Donna, under-reported.

- Yes, a study from North Carolina State University, my alma mater.

Gmail, they studied Gmail over the computer science department and they studied Outlook and Yahoo.

They found that Gmail sent 77% more conservative or Republican based blast emails to spam.

Outlook and Yahoo, on the other hand, sent 14% more Democrat or liberal blast emails to spam.

Now the discrepancy is really interesting.

Google, Gmail's a Google product, Google says, well, it's just about how people are using it.

If they drag it to spam, we'll send everything just like it to it.

These researchers say they didn't really look at that.

They only looked at the algorithm and how it functioned.

And this is really important as we go into 2024 and campaigns are spending a lot of money, a lot of money on some of these direct marketing pieces.

And this may be negatively impacting conservatives who are trying to reach folks through Gmail.

- Well, was there any response from Google?

- Google said, you know, it's hooey and that we are only responding and building our algorithm to function the way people wanna use it.

But the study only looked at how it's operating, not when used by the recipient.

- Interesting.

Let's go to the lightning round.

Who's up and who's down this week, Mitch?

- Who's up this week, the Easter bunny.

Who knew that this cuddly character could boss around the president of the United States and tell him not to answer reporter's questions about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

- [Marc] That's an ad.

From the more serious perspective, that's bad news for the Biden administration staff, that they should have said, let's not have the Easter bunny looking like he's bossing the president around.

- [Marc] Right.

- What's down, candidate debates in North Carolina politics.

We've already talked about this.

Ted Budd, who seems to be the front runner in that Senate race, no debates, but that doesn't seem to be hurting him.

- Up and down, please.

- So up, general assembly medical marijuana, seems like that is gonna be a conversation pulling out 72% of both Republicans and Democrats across the board are supportive.

I don't even know if Santa Claus polls that highly in North Carolina.

Down, something in my backyard, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools asked superintendent Earnest Winston to not work with them anymore.

- Headline, not headline, up and down please.

- Up and down is the number of student grants that are actually awarded by the Langley Foundation to community college students.

So 13,600 community college grants were awarded to individuals.

And so that equated to 8.6 million dollars.

And then my down for the week is unemployment, in North Carolina, we continue the downward trend.

It's 1.7% lower than it was last year and we are beating the national average.

- How many businesses are coming into North Carolina?

What did I see?

- [Woman] A ridiculous amount.

- It's encouraging.

So, and that said, my up is Roy Cooper.

He was named Washington Post on the top list of possible presidential contenders for the democratic ticket in '24.

He was listed as number six.

He was down one, he was number five last year for the Washington Post.

Their reason, they described him as a Biden-like candidate and they said he might be just vanilla enough, just unknown enough to be able to be branded by the party for next go around.

- It's a key state.

- It is a key state.

North Carolina's a tremendously powerful state and something that's been happening for a really long time.

My down is public schools.

66% of parents say that K12 schools are moving in the wrong direction.

And there's more of a call for a parental bill of rights.

- Headline next week, Mitch.

- Voters start to cast ballots for May 17th primary.

- Headline next week, Vicki.

- Mitch Kokai takes Vicki Sawyers' headline for next week.

[all laughing] - [Marc] Oh no.

When does early voting start?

- The 28th, yeah.

- Headline next week.

- More polling shows that it's going to be a very competitive November here in North Carolina.

- [Marc] Headline next week.

- Absolutely, I think that we're gonna see, as kids get out of school next year, we're really gonna have to evaluate, out of school next week.

They're gonna have to evaluate what's coming for next year in K12 schools.

- You know, I actually think Cooper could be on the ticket.

I mean, he comes from a key state.

He doesn't make mistakes.

He's very disciplined.

- He's very disciplined.

- He's got a great story to tell.

- And nationally, Democrats like what's happening here in North Carolina, and they're attributing it to him on the Democrat side.

Republicans are saying, hey, look, we have a general assembly that's done a lot of this.

- Okay, we gotta roll, great job panel.

That's it for us, thanks for watching.

Hope to see you next week on Front Row.

Have a great weekend.

[grand music] - [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenberg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at PBSNC.org/FrontRow.

[dramatic music] ♪