The candidates running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction faced off in a debate in Southern Pines Monday, outlining their stances on school funding and safety, while also poking at each other’s records and past controversies.
Green repeatedly cited his experience as a former superintendent of Guilford County Schools and long tenure in education.
But Morrow, a former nurse who homeschooled her children, positioned herself as an outsider working against a school system she says is serving bureaucrats and failing students.
“It’s important, experience,” Morrow said. “But I think one of my greatest qualifications is that I have no experience in a failing system that chooses to continue to fund failures and only wants to get more money for those people at the top that are the bureaucrats like my opponent who’s gotten wealthy and powerful off the backs of our students and our teachers.”
Both candidates argued for higher teacher pay. But Morrow also said officials are spending educational funding irresponsibly. She vowed to audit the Department of Public Instruction, educational programs and individual school districts.
Green, on the other hand, argued a lack of school funding is the biggest issue facing public schools. He argued against using public education funding on private school vouchers, and said he’d push the General Assembly for more funding.
“This is an absolute problem. It is, perhaps, the biggest problem that we have facing our public schools,” Green said. “And I’m not typically one that likes to always lift up funding, but we’ve reached the point where this is the issue.”
Morrow argued improving school safety was paramount and accused Green of working with groups who have advocated for removing school resource officers in his capacity as executive director of the non-profit Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. She says she wants to create a statewide program that would put two school resource officers in every school.
Green, however, said he supports school resource officers, but believes should prioritize mental health counselors first, arguing school resource officers shouldn’t be involved in “many of the day-to-day things we get them involved in.”
He also criticized Morrow’s past controversial rhetoric around LGBTQ students, after she recently claimed falsely on social media that the LGBTQ movement supports pedophilia.
“When you talk about safety, you talk about vulnerable communities, one of those would be our LGBTQ community,” Green said. “The plus, she says, now includes pedophilia, which is a false narrative. That community no longer feels safe when you have someone like that suggesting that kind of rhetoric.”
While Morrow depicted Green as a bureaucrat profiting off a failing education system, Green criticized Morrow for attending the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol and her past controversial comments, that include calling for the execution of former president Barack Obama.
