Month: September 2026

6. Cumberland County considers sweeping changes to school choice program

Dasia Williams/CityView The fate of the year-round calendar at E.E. Miller Elementary School is in flux after a school board committee voted to rescind an earlier vote that moved the school to a traditional calendar. Credit: Dasia Williams / CityView At E.E. Miller Elementary School, Michel Santana’s older daughter is learning her core subjects in […]

Written by on September 23, 2026

7. WS/FCS appoints Randy Bridges as interim superintendent

Amy Diaz/WFDD Radio The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Board of Education unexpectedly approved an interim superintendent Tuesday night. After amending the agenda to include the action item, the board voted 8-1 to approve a contract for Randy Bridges beginning Oct. 1 through June 30. The board shared no additional information about him or the contract in […]

Written by on September 23, 2026

8. Airport tracking potential delay to commercial service

Frank Daniels IV/The (Southern Pines) Pilot Commercial airline service at the Moore County Airport may be delayed after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week that KSOP was not among the recipients of its Small Communities Air Service Development Program (SCASD) grants this year. Director Rick Cloutier said the Moore County Airport Authority still […]

Written by on September 23, 2026

9. Changes in SNAP program are costing NC counties

Kip Tabb/Outer Banks Voice After the federal government reconfigured how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are administered and the state passed the costs on to the counties, they face new SNAP-related costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. The SNAP program provides food benefits to low-income families. When Congress passed the […]

Written by on September 23, 2026

Locke poll finds widening leads for Democrats

The latest poll for the Locke Foundation finds about an eight-point generic advantage for Democrats on the General Assembly ballot. Harper Polling’s survey was in the field from Sept. 13 to Sept. 15 and found that of the 608 likely voters it talked to, 49.5% said they were probably or definitely going to vote for […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

Charlotte schools quarrel reaches ears in Raleigh

State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office confirmed Thursday that it’s looking into what it terms “the matter involving Superintendent Crystal Hill” of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The acknowledgement comes amid some intense drama for the district, which has a $2.1 billion budget and as of the 2025-26 academic year was serving 143,757 students. It began when the […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

Rural practice still not drawing NC med-school grads

North Carolina’s would-be physicians have been shying away from setting up primary care practices in the rural parts of the state for years, and the situation is not getting better. Only eight of the 463 people who graduated from a public or private medical school here in 2015 were practicing in rural North Carolina in […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

BOG open to another set of tuition increases

UNC System President Peter Hans and his aides left Wednesday’s Board of Governors budget committee meeting with an implicit green light to entertain campus-level requests for another set of tuition increases. The idea drew objections mainly from BOG member Art Pope, the former state legislator and CEO of Variety Wholesalers. “We should go back to […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

Court of Appeals torpedoes some coastal regs

A divided N.C. Court of Appeals panel has sided with the Rules Review Commission on the key point of its battle with the Coastal Resources Commission over the renewal of a set of environmental regulations. Republican Judges Jefferson Griffin and Jeffery Carpenter ruled Wednesday that strictures against “significant adverse impact” in several of the CRC’s […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

UNC flagships’ pay for football lags the big guys

Even UNC System President Peter Hans concedes that in college sports going forward, it’s likely that “those who spend the most will generally win the most games.” His comment, leading off a Wednesday briefing on athletics spending for the Board of Governors, came the same day The Athletic published a story that highlights how big […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

FERC: Grid performed better in early 2026 storms

Federal regulators say the East Coast’s power grid, North Carolina’s included, handled January’s two winter storms way better than it did the Christmas Eve storm back in 2022 that prompted some overnight blackouts. The main reason for this, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says, is that utilities like Duke Energy planned better, communicated better and […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

More detail on UNC System athletics spending

UNC System campuses used student fees to raise $136.4 million for their intercollegiate sports teams in fiscal 2024-25, about 21.3% of what it cost to field them. Campus also directly subsidized their sports programs to the tune of $63.2 million, via cash allocations from other parts of their operation or via “indirect” means such as […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

Legislators should act on data-center rates, AG says

Though they definitely favor setting up a special power-rate class for data centers, Attorney General Jeff Jackson and his aides nonetheless say the N.C. Utilities Commission has to tread carefully. Anything on those lines has to be “artfully designed” to remain in compliance with state anti-discrimination law that bars utilities from using rates to impose […]

Written by on September 22, 2026

CON needs to go, State Health Plan trustee says

The No. 2 man on the State Health Plan trustees told a Congressional subcommittee he favors doing away with North Carolina’s certificate-of-need laws to foster more competition in the healthcare sector. “There’s no reason for you to have to seek state permission to build a healthcare facility,” says Dr. Brian Miller, a Johns Hopkins physician […]

Written by on September 22, 2026