- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," teacher pay frustrations lead to walkouts and broader conversations about the growing discontent with American education, and new voter laws create space for more poll observers.

Leaving some asking, "Are we being watched while we vote?"

Stay with us to find out.

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[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music fades out] - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum."

I'm your host, Kenia Thompson.

A lot of talk lately about the pay crisis happening at Durham Public Schools.

It's a crisis that has led to multiple school cancellations and closures.

Parents, teachers, and students are wondering if there is a solution.

This only begins our topic today, so we're gonna get right into it and welcome our guests.

I wanna welcome to the show political advisors and hear what they have to say.

So let's welcome our first guest, District 20 Senator, Senator Natalie Murdock, and the President of the Frederick Douglas Foundation of North Carolina, Immanuel Jarvis.

Welcome to the show.

- Hey, thanks for having me.

- Thank you for having us, yeah.

- Guys, doing well today?

- Yes, yes.

- Wonderful.

- [Natalie] Doing great.

- So we spotlighting Durham public schools, but there's a overall state kind of crisis, as far as teacher pay, educator pay, honestly.

- Yeah.

- Senator, can you give us some insights as to what's going on?

- Yes, first and foremost, it is just an issue that impacts so many different people.

The students, more than anything, they deserve to have the ability to go to school just to to learn.

I myself am a proud product of public schools, but we definitely understand the anger, the rage, and the outcry, a lot of the staff that were impacted by this error.

To take a step back, there was a reclassification of pay for your classified staff.

So those are your mechanics, your custodians, your bus drivers.

My own grandmother was a cafeteria worker in Guilford County Schools.

So that is near and dear to my heart.

Worked at the state level to get their pay up to $15 an hour.

So we have done a lot of work on that.

But in Durham, they did a study and announced, I believe October or so of last year, the results of that, and that folks will be getting these pay increases.

When they went back again in November, there were issues that they found out that they wouldn't actually be able to sustain that financially.

- [Kenia] Right.

- The CFO resigned.

Then that led to even the superintendent resigning.

But it's my understanding that where we are now, we have an interim superintendent that we're gonna work with.

We have to, because we have to figure this out.

But just in the last few days, they've had additional meetings where they have agreed to keep folks at the 11% of the increase, because financially that's really all they can sustain through June.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- But do have to stress, these are folks that typically are making $48,000 and less.

Their living paycheck to paycheck.

They budgeted based on thinking they would be making a certain amount of money.

So that outrage, the frustration that folks are feeling is validated.

Folks are living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans.

- [Kenia] Right.

- And even if you lose 100 to $200 in your check, it's a big deal, and just a learning experience for us to do a reset because we have to get this right for our teachers as well as our babies, our students, that are going to school every day.

- Yeah, Immanuel, you know, there was a report that came out from the National Education Association that showed that North Carolina ranks 36.

Our teachers are getting about 56K.

And then obviously again, we've got other tiers that are lower than that.

Historically, has this always been an issue in the state?

- Well, I mean, if we go back about 10 years, 2013, we look at where we were.

Now, you're accurate with the 36 ranking.

We're at ranked 36, but about 10 years ago we're ranked 46.

And over the last 10 years, there's been about seven pay increases that have actually taken the North Carolina teachers and educators up to the 36 ranking.

Now, that's not enough.

- [Kenia] Right.

- The fact of the matter is that when you look at the affordability of North Carolina, we're ranked number 23.

So if you have an affordability of 23 in the nation, but your teacher pays at 36 in the nation, there is a disparity that is going to really hurt.

- [Kenia] Right.

- But I think we also have to look at the progress.

You know, Booker T. Washington said that "Success should not be measured by where a person is, but by the obstacles that they've overcome to reach where they are."

And when we look at that, you know, I've gone into Durham Public Schools, and they have blue banners in some of the schools that talk about, hey, we've increased our attainment.

We were at 33% reading proficiency and now we're at 42.

Every year, we're getting better.

And they celebrate that.

Now, I'm not expecting for the North Carolina legislature to be celebrating a 36 ranking in the state, but I think that if we continue in legislators like Senator Murdock working with others across the aisle to continue to work that, and get that higher, I think it's important.

Now in Durham, we have to kind of just look at some of the numbers here.

- [Kenia] Right.

- Durham is not a poor county.

It is in the top 10 out of all a hundred, I think 15 school districts in the state, in terms of pupil expenditure.

So we have to really look at the allocation of how that money is actually being getting to the students.

If you remember a long time, well for me, there was this game that you have a glass jar, and you have rocks, and you have smaller rocks, and you have pebbles and you have sand, you have water.

And the whole goal was to put everything to fit inside that glass jar.

But if you start with the water, and the sand, the pebbles, and then the big rocks, it doesn't fit.

You have to put the big rocks in first, the most important things.

And the most important things is not anything else, is making sure that the children are able to read, write, and be able to have strong arithmetic.

- [Kenia] Right.

- And sadly, when we look at the scope of our education, sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes we're losing perspective of what's the most important thing.

And so when we run into situations and shortfalls like that, we have to really do need to do a reset and say, what is going on here?

What do we need to make sure that in April we're not sending out an email or a social media post that says, hey, we need paper.

We ran out of paper for our students.

- [Kenia] Right.

- How in the world does a school that is ranking the top 10 out of the state run out of paper before the end of school system?

So again, this is reallocation of.

- I Wanna put a pause there, because, you know, we focus on these larger school systems, White County, Durham County.

There are rural systems that are not getting this attention.

What is happening in those rural areas?

- Yes.

Thank you so much for that question because as we are now reopening the Leandro suit again.

- Thank you.

- And particularly when you look at counties like Hoke County, Leandro is a real person.

- Right.

- Mm-hm.

- He is now 42 years old.

And thank you for that question.

I represent Durham.

I'm thrilled to represent an urban area, but I have roots in Alamance County.

My grandmother, my mom went to high school in Caswell County.

So to your point, those are counties that are smaller.

They don't have the tax base of a Durham.

- Right.

- The Research Triangle Park is right down the street.

- Yeah.

- So we have the ability to raise taxes in Durham so that we can provide additional funding for our public schools.

If you're a Hoke county, if you're a Bertie County, if you're in North Hampton County, Cumberland, Warren, a lot of those counties that were in that initial lawsuit said, "We don't have the resources."

It's not, you can't compare it apples to oranges when they don't have the financial ability to say when my colleagues don't put enough money in public education, they don't have the luxury of saying, well, "You know what?"

Like with this current incident, surely at some point folks will say, "Why can't the county put more money in?"

That is not on the table for a lot of other counties.

The tax base simply isn't there.

- [Host] Exactly.

- There are counties where the local school system is the largest employer.

- Right.

- In the district.

You know, so you leave the kids behind and more than likely they are your black students in these rural areas or students that don't have the opportunity to access a lot of after school programs, don't have the music, don't have the arts.

Even in Halifax County, there's a school where they only get Spanish up to second grade because at the high school level, they cannot afford any Spanish teachers.

- Wow.

- So there definitely is a lot that we're getting wrong.

And the piece on the supplement is still very expensive to live in a Durham and an Orange County.

And the top four counties were actually excluded from a budget provision that would've provided additional funding for teachers to have a cost of living increase.

But back to those students, that per pupil spending, that really to me is I think what people miss with Leandro.

That is where you're seeing those disparities because the bigger counties are making up, from some of it by putting more money into it.

- [Host] Right.

- Whereas these rural counties cannot do it.

So their per pupil spending levels are much lower than our larger urban areas.

- I wanna understand a little bit more.

You know, we find funding for things that we wanna find funding for.

- Yes.

- Okay?

How do we not find funding for education?

I don't understand, and I don't know that you have the answer and I respect the answers that you may not be able to share.

- Yes.

- But help us understand why has this continued to be an issue and it's open to either one of you.

- Well, I mean I know in Durham I think it's like a 387 million, I think that might be right in terms of their budget.

It's not a small budget.

- Yeah.

- But then you look at the money that's being put forth and then also the results from the students in terms of reading proficiency and so forth.

And so many times I grew up thinking that you give more money, smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay, better education.

And then I learned across the world that there are countries and there are societies that have way higher classroom sizes, way lower teacher pay.

- Yes.

- But yet they're excelling, they're beating us.

And so money is an element, a very strong ingredient.

I consider it the tomato in tomato sauce.

Very important.

But if you just have tomatoes in tomato sauce and nothing else, it's not gonna taste that good.

- Yeah.

- And I think that's what we're looking at.

And so the focus needs to be on the resources, but it also needs to be on the intangibles of creating a desire to learn from just the student and then the parent and then everything else moving out.

And so my daughter is an educator, a first-year educator.

She graduated from HBCU, Kentucky State University, and is in education.

Didn't think she was gonna be in, but she's in it.

So I see her when she says, "Oh, no school today.

Oh no school today.

Oh no," what in the world?

How are these kids are able to learn?

"No school today?"

And so it's hurting like Senator Murdock said, it is hurting our children.

It's hurting the least of them.

The ones that don't have the support system at home, sometimes the school is the only support system they have.

And so when there are days when they're out, there's days that they're not eating, the days that they're not cared for, the days that they're not learning.

And these are things that as adults, we have a responsibility to say, "Look, we have got to figure this out."

There's multiple ingredients.

We need to make sure we're tapping on each one of those ingredients to make sure that have results for our children.

- And then, and back to the funding piece.

I do, there are a lot of different elements that go into education.

If it was easy, we would all be excelling with it.

But since you did ask about the money piece, I do wanna highlight the initial Leandro ruling.

I think they said around 1.7 billion should have been provided.

We only did about half of that.

I think that was in 2022.

Maybe we're around 700 million.

So I do think for some it is an issue of resources.

I've had principals in Edgecombe County tell me there are rats and feces in the school.

We've had students to come and complain about that.

- Wow.

- And back to the counties.

In Durham, I believe we've built five, four, or five new schools recently because we were able to generate the revenue to have the new buildings.

But yes, but also I think as legislators, allowing educators to be educators, a lot of teachers don't feel supported.

They feel like they're teaching in a hostile environment.

And I'll be honest, I've gone to some schools just this month and I had a moment where I said, "Am I, you know, breaking one of our new laws that I don't agree with?"

I was reading about Ruby Bridges and the challenges she faced trying to integrate a school.

And so if I felt that way just as a visitor, a lot of teachers are just trying to keep up with all the new requirements that we're putting on the public schools.

- Right.

- A lot of the charters and provinces, they have a little bit more freedom.

They can be a little more creative.

And your Montessoris and things like that.

- Right.

- So I think that we need to allow educators to do what they were trained to do.

Restoring the master's pay, bringing back a full fledged teaching fellows program.

There's a lot that we can do all around to make North Carolina adhere to that constitutional requirement of providing a sound basic education.

- I wanna kind of transition the conversation.

Still education, not early education, higher ed.

We're talking about St. Augustine's University.

- Yes.

- The financial issue though is a current threat.

Like it's an existing threat.

So we've heard that they're under appeal for their accreditation.

- Yes.

- They're connected financially once again, but let's talk about what that implication might mean for the university.

Manuel, I'll start with you.

- Yeah, so when I've kind of observed this particular university and the issues and the woes that they're dealing with, it's been going on for a while.

Reports say that, you know, there hasn't been any taxes paid since 2020.

And one of the things I'm looking at is, there's a particular example where, when I read and saw this example, I said, "There's a issue at the top."

Here's the reason why.

The school decided, hey, let's go ahead and get a line of credit.

They pursued to get a line of credit for $7 million from a Arkansas-based firm, okay, but they didn't realize that when they got that line of credit, they weren't in first position.

They were in second position so there's $2.5 million of bad debt that actually went to the creditors before they received their money.

So they went out looking for a $7 million line of credit, but they only got 4.5 million.

This is operating expenses.

This keeps the lights on, making sure kids have food, making sure that dorms are clean, making sure the professors, they're able to meet payroll.

And so when I see things like that, it shows me that at the top there is a lack of institutional knowledge to know that, wait a minute, if we go ahead and do this loan, this line of credit, we're not gonna get the full $7 million that we think we're gonna get because we still have bad debt somewhere else that's gonna be paid first before we get our money.

So it just goes to show just where some of the leadership is.

And I don't fault the professors, and I definitely don't fault the people who are doing landscaping even right now, cutting the grass, cleaning floors, feeding kids for breakfast right now, right, I don't fault them at all, but I want to, let's think of it this way.

If social services walked into a home where a mother and father were, but because of lack of resources, the lights were turned off, the water was turned off, there's feces and the toilet is dirty and there's no food, you would imagine that social services would remove those children not because they hate the parents but because they love the children.

And we're in a situation right now where Saint Aug has over 900 students there.

Some of them that come from across the country to study there.

$26,000 a year to go that to a particular school and they're wondering, "Am I even, my bachelor's gonna even mean anything?"

And so in that case, we have universities in better shape, whether it's A&T or Central or Shaw or schools around.

And it may be, if this appeal does not work, it may be best for those children and those, I shouldn't say children 'cause they're 18, 19, 20 years old.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But for these young people to be able to go and be able to continue their education because that's the reason why they came there.

- Want to come to you before we move on to voter polls, but yes, go ahead.

- Yeah, same.

Just heart goes out to the entire campus.

As, you know, Jarvis just stated, they've had issues for just a really long time and had some leadership changes.

They do have a new interim chancellor, and I just think through their board, and leadership definitely, definitely comes from the top, and we've got to get a handle on why they continue to have these issues, but hopeful that as Bennett College and other colleges have been able to turn it around through looking at different accreditation protocols.

But some of their honor students have already started the process to transfer to other schools.

- That's unfortunate.

- And you can't fault the students for saying they have to examine all of their options, but we love and support our HBCUs, and wanna do everything that we can do to make them be successful.

- For sure, and- - And I think that there's some out of the box things that are really gonna need to be happening.

If you look at that campus, and the bottom line is this, if you can't support, financially, the campus, then sometimes, you know what people do if they can't pay for their mortgage?

They rent out a room.

They rent out two rooms.

They have a three bedroom, rent out two rooms, and now they're bringing in $1,000 a month in two bedrooms, and now they can actually pay their mortgage.

Maybe Saint Aug needs to take a look at that.

These buildings that they have, maybe they need to pull back.

Maybe rent some of these things, use some of these things for other expenses and bring in money so they're able to take care of their students, the ones that they still have, and then go start from scratch and build from there.

- Great points.

You know, so when we talk about a lot of these financial concerns within education, a lot of it is more societal, right?

There's a deeper thread, and a lot of it's linked to our voting habits and trends and our lack of voting sometimes.

- Yes.

- Let's talk about it.

Primaries, we're currently in primaries.

- [Immanuel] Yes, we are.

- I think March 5th is the last day to vote.

- Yes, mm-hmm.

- Yes, yeah.

- What are some of the...

So new voter laws were passed.

- Yeah, there were.

- Yes.

- Okay, one in particular saying that more poll observers will be in these poll areas, in these voting areas.

Immanuel, let's talk about what that means, what that looks like.

Are people gonna be over our shoulders?

- [Immanuel] Got it, yeah.

- What does that look like?

- That's a good question.

I think that if people are not cognizant of exactly the role of a poll observer, they can seem, by reading the headlines, it's gonna be very intimidating.

- Yes.

- But I akin poll observers to proctors of a test.

The proctor of a test makes sure that we start on time, we end on time, number one.

They make sure the room is quiet.

They make sure it's not intimidating.

And then lastly, they make sure that no one's doing anything on the side that they're not supposed to be doing, okay?

Up until this point, before this law came about, I would walk into a gymnasium and I would see about 20 voting booths in the middle of the gym.

On the sideline, you'd have about five or six tables that have people, A through J, K through whatever.

And you go in and get your ballot and you walk over.

And then look all the way in the corner about 75 feet away and I'd see a poll observer or two standing over there.

And I'm thinking... Or sitting, I should say.

And I'm thinking, "What are they able to see?

What are they able to observe?"

Nothing.

It's almost like using a proctor and saying, "Stand outside of the classroom and look through the window to do your job."

The role of a poll observer is not to talk to the voters.

Absolutely not.

It's not even to talk to anyone but the precinct judge themselves.

But now with this new law, it allows them to actually be able to write notes.

Not share notes, not take pictures, but to be able to write those notes.

If they have a question, they must talk to the chief judge.

And also they're at least in earshot, to be able to hear the conversation of "What is your name?

What is your address?

Can I see your ID?"

These are the things that a proctor would look at, look, with adjudicating a task.

And this is not just Republicans.

They're libertarians, they're Democrats, they're Republicans, everyone.

And these are ordinary citizens.

These are not some kind of bureaucrats that come with a ruler saying, "What are you doing?"

These are just moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas that just wanna be a part of the system to make sure that individuals have confidence when they go to the polls that their vote counts.

- Yes, yes, thank you.

That was a great breakdown.

You did a great job making that analogy for understanding.

In addition to these extended range in the voting area, is there anything else that we need to be aware of that this new law might bring?

- Yes, actually, with the poll observers, it's concerning.

It's concerning for me.

The reasoning that it is concerning is because particularly coming off of the last presidential election, we've just seen additional incidents of hostility and folks feeling uncomfortable with their voting.

The most discomforting example of that in North Carolina.

In Weaverville, you actually had folks that showed up with guns in plain sight while people were trying to vote.

At the time, I was working on one of the presidential campaigns, I was working for Biden-Harris, and we had access to the calls that were coming in.

Well, not access to the calls but we would get information if people said, "Hey, I felt uncomfortable voting here.

"I saw these issues."

So even though it was a one-off, the reason that it's concerning to me is it can really be a slippery slope.

I love that you said that some of these folks are well-intentioned but everyone is not well-intentioned.

And honestly, it only takes one or two incidents to make people feel uncomfortable voting.

We all know the history of voting, particularly in the South with Jim Crow laws and you know, having to take a literacy test and poll tax and all of that.

So I'm in the camp of we need to make voting easy.

I think if anything, we need to be more concerned about cybersecurity, of making sure that from a technological perspective, we secure our elections.

So I think there are other ways to do that.

To me, I think some folks are a little too excited about this poll observer measure, which makes me very skeptical of the need of it.

I like the nonpartisan organizations we have that if you feel uncomfortable, there's something you see that doesn't feel right, having that number.

You definitely need attorneys present.

There are instances where a county, a local precinct, may not have power and you'll need to go to a local judge and say, "Wait a minute, they were out "of power for a whole hour."

We want them to have the ability to vote for another hour because people lost the ability to vote, right?

But you know, know a lot about the process.

My dad was actually a chief precinct judge for over 10 years, so I love that we do have a citizen-led system.

But I think that that's concerning.

But also taking a step back with voting, a very concerning provision and some of this has already been struck down in the court.

We have an additional signature that is needed for your absentee ballots.

We got it down to one during COVID.

And the one that we're the most concern or a lot of people are the most concerned about is with your mail-in absentee ballot.

It has to be received by election day.

The concern is if it is postmarked, a lot of us believe, in my opinion and actually the average voter, if it is postmarked by election day, that ballot should count.

Now, we're not saying you should have two weeks for that ballot to show up but a few days.

And so I am concerned of as far as how many ballots will be thrown out because of that one provision.

Back of a napkin, another version of that law with that same provision would've impacted around 18,000 votes in the state of North Carolina in a presidential year.

And when you put the math and the dots together, we have had tough elections.

Our own current governor in 2016 won by 10,000 votes.

So when I hear that 10, 15, 20,000 votes could be at stake as a result of new legislation, it is very concerning.

And that is why a portion of it has already been struck down by a federal judge.

- Well, fortunately, we don't have literacy laws.

We don't have the poll tax.

We don't have those type of things.

We have citizens that range in spectrum from all political persuasions that want to be involved in the process.

These are not paid.

When we're looking at cybersecurity and things like that, which are very important, 100% percent agreement with that, those are things that cost.

You have to put it into a budget and you have to allocate resources for it.

There's no resources allocated for poll observers.

These are just men and women.

Sometimes they're young.

Sometimes they're old.

Sometimes you have 80-year-old ladies that are just kind of sitting in there and they just want to make sure that they are part of the process.

And I think that anytime that we have to be careful not to castigate groups of people as well, we don't know what their intentions are.

If there's an individual or an incident where a person shows their impropriety, then that needs to be dealt with.

But to castigate, I know that there's probably well over I think like 15,000 poll observers in the last presidential election.

And there'll be more.

There'll be probably anywhere between 20 to 30 across the state, 20 to 30,000 across the state.

And they have every persuasion.

And so I think that the more if an individual is being antagonized or intimidated, that needs to stop immediately, immediately.

There should be no grace for that whatsoever.

But if an individual's coming and they're observing and they're looking at what's going on, not impeding progress, not standing in the way, not coming in with weapons.

Those are type of things that I think actually strengthen our democracy.

- Well, that concludes our conversation for today.

So much more that we can discuss and we will.

Immanuel Jarvis, Senator Natalie Murdoch, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- And we thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenya Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

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