public schools
March 15, 2023 -
When it comes to protecting North Carolina schoolchildren from the widespread industrial PFAS pollution in the state's drinking water, the burden falls on parent-advocates, the state's cash-strapped school systems, and municipal water systems often unprepared to address the threat.
October 27, 2022 -
In 1984, Mab Segrest reported on the Ku Klux Klan's activities in North Carolina public schools in the context of the wider conservative backlash against racial integration and that year's elections. We republish her Southern Exposure report amid another conservative political backlash against public schools, which the Klan is using for its own purposes.
May 24, 2022 -
A U.S. House subcommittee recently held a hearing into ongoing efforts to limit discussion in public school classrooms on American history, race, and LGBTQ+ issues — and to punish teachers who broach those topics. Among those who testified was James Whitfield, a high school principal from North Texas who lost his job after sending students an email in response to killings of Black people by police and white vigilantes that acknowledged systemic racism and called education "a necessary conduit to get liberty and justice for all."
May 4, 2022 -
If you've never witnessed or experienced a school paddling, it may be hard to understand how terrifying they are to a child. Yet U.S. public school teachers and principals in 19 states are allowed to beat children with wooden paddles, which originated as a tool to inflict pain on enslaved people without causing permanent injury that might impede their work.
October 4, 2021 -
South Carolina is dealing with a high proportion of children suffering from COVID-19, but Gov. Henry McMaster (R) and other state leaders want to block public schools from enforcing mask mandates. We hear from teachers and doctors fighting to protect children from deadly infection.
August 26, 2020 -
For many students, remote learning in the midst of a pandemic is an uphill climb. For those learning English as a second language, the climb can be even steeper. It's a concern across the South, where a number of states have large public school enrollments of English language learners.
October 25, 2019 -
Despite the Supreme Court's 65-year-old landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling establishing that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, school secession efforts like the one now underway in Louisiana's East Baton Rouge Parish are leading to more segregated schools.
