Hannah Blackburn: Schools need more funding

I was exasperated by deputy state superintendent Rebecca Garland’s comments in the July 22 news article “Experts diverge on schools.”

As a product of North Carolina schools, I can say there are absolutely not enough resources out there for students. It’s not that resources could be “redirected” to better purposes. And any student or teacher will say that not all teachers working in our school systems are good or even competent.

Even in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system, often considered one of the best districts in the state, teachers struggle to get textbooks and students sometimes struggle with mediocre instruction. To deny these problems exist or to suggest we won’t need more money to fix them is to ignore reality.

Worse, it prevents the state from searching for real solutions and then funding those solutions. This type of denial is one of the reasons our schools have so many problems in the first place.

It suggests, dangerously, that we don’t need more funding for public schools because they’re doing just fine. They’re not. Our schools need more money, money that is allocated with advice from teachers and students who are on the ground dealing with these problems.

This story was originally published July 23, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Hannah Blackburn: Schools need more funding."