Liz Schlemmer

About 200 students from several Chapel Hill area schools marched together up a hill, and nearly five miles across their town behind an orange banner that said "Enough."

Teachers in Arizona are protesting for higher pay, while Kentucky educators rallied at their state capitol this Friday. The same day, Oklahoma teachers ended a 9-day walkout, rivaling the length of time West Virginia teachers left their classrooms last month. Distressed teachers seeking higher pay and better funding for education have created a movement in red states, leaving some to wonder, will North Carolina teachers join in next?

School psychologists want legislators to know that there aren't enough of them to go around.

A subcommittee of the House Select Committee met Monday to consider improvements to school mental health services. One of the resounding recommendations from school pyschologists and counselors: they need more support.

The city of Greensboro could do more to ensure businesses owned by women and minorities get contracts with the city, according to a report presented to the city council this week.

University of North Carolina System President Margaret Spellings updated the joint legislative education oversight committee Tuesday on a new commission to develop statewide education goals.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has plans to help form a state nature preserve on a site that may be the final destination of the historic lost colony at Roanoke Island.

The State Board of Education will vote this week on an operator for the first school in the state's Innovative School District, and the recommended contender's board of directors includes a former legislator who sponsored the bill to create the new district.

Educators and education policy leaders are weighing many options when it comes to improving school safety in an age of mass school shootings and other threats of violence. Add to that list strengthening penalties for anyone who threatens a school and its students.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s answer to the Parkland shooting and a still-simmering national conversation about school safety began Wednesday with a legislative committee. The House Select Committee on School Safety met for the first time to discuss measures to keep public school students safe.

A new report from the left-leaning NC Justice Center has found that schools in the state have become slightly more segregated in the past decade. The report Stymied by Segregation found that the number of racially or economically isolated schools has gone up in that time.

Many North Carolina students will join fellow students across the country in walking out of classes Wednesday. The day marks one month after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Area schools are taking a variety of approaches to the expected protests.

The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force voted Wednesday to recommend that the General Assembly support a statewide firearm safety initiative. That effort would focus on spreading awareness of safe firearm storage and would distribute free gun locks. The recommendation will go into the task force’s action agenda for the legislature’s short session in the spring.

State Superintendent Mark Johnson is asking teachers whether or not they would like to be armed. So far, most say no. Johnson sent an informal, online poll in an email to all of the about 100,000 public school teachers across the state Thursday morning and received more than 19,000 responses in the first 24 hours.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore is expected to form a new House committee on school safety on Tuesday. That comes days after a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left 17 people dead.

The General Assembly passed a bill Tuesday primarily to address issues with a prior law that reduces class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. While the measure to phase in and better fund those reductions had bipartisan support, Democrats have criticized the bill for tacking on a number of other provisions.

The North Carolina Supreme Court will hear a case Wednesday over a power struggle between Republican State Superintendent Mark Johnson and the Republican-led State Board of Education. Shortly after Johnson's election in 2016, the General Assembly passed a law to shift powers from the governor-appointed board to the superintendent.

Governor Roy Cooper is urging business leaders to pressure the General Assembly to make funding for education a higher priority.

The Education Savings Account is a new state program that allows families of qualified children with disabilities to apply for a taxpayer-funded account to pay for educational expenses while attending a private school.

The State Board of Education has granted  the Innovative School District an extra 60 days to choose an operator for its first school.

A legislative task force is in a year-long process to consider overhauling how public schools are funded. Legislators heard from school administrators on Wednesday about their thoughts on the current funding model.

A state legislative committee that oversees emergency management heard an update Thursday on school safety measures. The committee's chair opened the meeting with a reflection on recent school shootings in other states.

School choice advocates around the state this week are celebrating their ability to choose a school other than the local public school to which their child is zoned. Charter school students and voucher recipients are wrapping up in yellow scarves embroidered with the words, "National School Choice Week," and carrying signs that say, "Got choice?"

Thousands of teachers across the state are receiving bonuses this January as a reward for helping improve their students’ test scores. That includes pre-existing bonuses for some specialized high school teachers* and third grade reading teachers, as well as brand new bonuses in certain core subjects in elementary and middle school.

Updated 5:45 p.m. | Jan. 18, 2018

Southerners shoveled, scraped and plowed their way Thursday out of a snowy deep freeze that caused a standstill across much of a region accustomed to mild winters.

Aspiring new teachers in North Carolina have had to wait up to six months to receive their teaching licenses, according to complaints the Department of Public Instruction has received from educators as well as schools looking to hire.