Dive Brief:
- The North Carolina State Board of Education has decided to sue the state over a law that would transfer many decision-making powers from the board to the state's Department of Public Instruction.
- Among those authorities being transferred are the requirement for board approval of contracts and hires and the supervisory authority for charter schools in the state.
- According to the Charlotte News and Observer, "conflicts over divisions of power between the state board and the superintendent go back decades" with there being perpetual confusion over whether the state superintendent — who heads the Department of Public Instruction — is subject to the authority of the state Board of Education, or vice versa. A judge granted a temporary restraining order Dec. 29 to keep the law from going into effect; the next hearing will be Jan. 6.
Dive Insight:
Those in favor of the changes call them "common-sense" reforms to promote transparency, but to some on-lookers, it may seem that decisions affecting schools are getting either farther away from those who will be faced with them. And since the provisions were part of a controversial bill which stripped incoming Gov. Roy Cooper of many of his gubernatorial powers, and assuming Cooper would be appointing new, likely Democratic, members to the school board following his inauguration, the move comes off as more political grandstanding than push to improve the processes governing the administration of schools in the state.