Liz Schlemmer
Education ReporterLiz Schlemmer is WUNC's K-12 Education Reporter. She has previously served as the Fletcher Fellow for Education Policy Reporting at WUNC and as the education reporter at Louisville Public Media.
She holds a M.A. from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill and a B.A. in history from Indiana University. Liz is originally from rural Indiana, where she grew up with a large extended family of educators.
Twitter: LSchlemmer_WUNC
Email: lschlemmer@wunc.org
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Many working parents struggle to afford child care, and the situation could get worse very soon. Federal COVID-19 relief funds that helped child care providers raise salaries to keep teachers are set to run out. Most providers plan to charge families more.
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North Carolina public schools are becoming more segregated by race, even as the overall student population is becoming more racially diverse. This trend comes as students of color now make up the majority of public school students.
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The CEO of an online educational gaming company donated more than $40,000 combined to the North Carolina Republican Party. Around the same time, his company, Plasma Games, received $6.3 million in state funding to put its science platform in schools. Now, state education officials say more than half the funds are going unused by schools.
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State Senate leaders want to spend $248 million in the coming school year to ensure that private school vouchers are available to every family that applied, regardless of their income level.
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Wake County public school educators held a "walk-in" at seven schools and one school bus depot early Tuesday morning to call for pay raises in their local salary supplements funded by the county.
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Protests continued Monday at an encampment at UNC Chapel Hill, as students called for the university to divest from investments that support Israel.
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Public schools across North Carolina are facing a range of financial challenges this spring. Growing charter school and private school enrollment threaten traditional public schools' state and local funding. Meanwhile federal COVID relief money is set to expire. Managing all of this are school district's chief financial officers.
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About 11.5% of North Carolina teachers left the profession last school year, including retirements. There were just over 6,000 teaching vacancies reported statewide, including classes without a fully licensed teacher.
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The Carolinas are the only two states that ban all government employees from unionizing.
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A state-funded pilot program is bringing high tech learning experiences to high school students in 17 school districts. School districts participating in the SparkNC program have set up labs where students can choose from a menu of short courses in topics like robotics, cybersecurity and software development.