Organizing to Protect NC’s Children
We Are Down Home
In August 2023, just six days before students in Alamance-Burlington School System (ABSS) were set to start a new school year, families learned that their kids would have to wait.
ABSS had just discovered that 32 out of their 36 school buildings had mold.
Parents were concerned, stressed and angry — and rightfully so. At a time when their kids should have been packing backpacks and taking first-day-of-school photos, parents were scrambling to find last-minute childcare, calling out of work and wondering whether, when schools finally opened, the buildings would be safe for their children.
Short-term, mold can cause allergic reactions like stuffy noses, itchy eyes and itchy skin, which make it hard for kids to concentrate on learning. And long-term exposure to mold can cause serious illness.
ABSS spent millions of dollars and several days on an intensive mold remediation effort. School eventually opened more than a week late.
But parents, educators and residents of Alamance-Burlington were left asking: How did this happen? And how can we make sure it doesn’t happen again?
A coalition works to protect NC’s public schools
“Our schools are underfunded,” says Todd Zimmer, co-executive director of We Are Down Home. “And when we fail to fund public schools, we endanger our kids.”
We Are Down Home is a nonprofit organization that advocates for working-class families in North Carolina’s small towns and rural places. They are leading the largest rural organizing effort this century in North Carolina, building multiracial coalitions led by community members in rural counties across the state.
They are also part of HEAL Together NC— a coalition of partners including Center for Racial Equity in Education and Education Justice Alliance — working to protect public school students and the schools they attend.
HEAL Together NC’s Public School Strong campaign brings together parents, educators and concerned residents across North Carolina to advocate for local public schools. Their members are active in 78 of 100 NC counties, including Alamance.
When ABSS announced that dozens of schools had a mold problem, Alamance County’s Public School Strong members got to work.
They brought parents and other concerned residents together to research the root causes of the problem, understand the power structures and policies that keep those root causes in place, and make a plan to fix them.
A local win and a canary in the coal mine
North Carolina ranks 48th in the country in spending on public education, and at the time of the mold problem, Alamance County ranked 45th out of 100 NC counties in local appropriations as a percentage of revenue per student.
Without sufficient funding, ABSS had to make tough decisions about how to stretch its budget as far as possible.
One way ABSS cut costs was to turn off air conditioning in school buildings over the summer. They did this for 20 years. But without air conditioning, buildings became more humid—especially as North Carolina summers grew hotter due to climate change. And in that trapped humidity, mold thrived.
Decades of underfunding at both the state and local levels pushed ABSS school buildings to a crisis point.
Public School Strong members knew that ABSS would need increased, sustained funding to keep the air conditioning on and school buildings safe so kids and educators could focus on learning. They advocated for increased funding at the county level.
In June of 2024, Alamance County commissioners approved an 8.6% property tax increase, and announced that all increased revenue — about $6 million in the first year — would go to ABSS.
While Public School Strong and Down Home members celebrated the news, Todd says, “We knew ABSS was the canary in the coal mine. As long as public schools are underfunded, these issues will continue to hurt kids and families in North Carolina.”
Sure enough, in August 2024, Person County Schools announced that they had found mold in three school buildings, forcing them to delay the start of school by two weeks.
HEAL Together NC is working on several long-term solutions to address the systemic issues affecting public schools in rural NC, from Alamance to Person County and beyond.
Tapping into federal dollars to help North Carolinians
Down Home has identified many opportunities through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a piece of federal legislation designed to help the economy while addressing climate change and improving infrastructure. The IRA makes billions of dollars available to local communities across the United States.
IRA resources could be used to help NC public schools install solar arrays, for example, which would reduce energy costs and provide educational opportunities for students. With lower utility bills, schools could keep air conditioning units operating all summer and during nights and weekends, which would prevent mold from growing. Nationwide, 1 in 10 public schools have solar, including almost 100 schools in North Carolina.
Investing in local public schools’ long-term sustainability makes sense, says Todd.
“Public schools, especially in rural places, are often the largest employer in the county,” he says. “They’re the biggest piece of social infrastructure, the place where most of the children in North Carolina go every day for most of the year. They’re also resiliency hubs and serve the entire community when a pandemic happens, or when a hurricane hits. Why would we not want to improve the quality of those school buildings, while making them less expensive to run?”
Working together to fully fund local public schools
In addition to securing local funding and unlocking IRA resources to improve school buildings, Down Home, HEAL Together NC and other partners are working to address the root cause of NC public schools’ challenges: lack of funding statewide.
One solution lies in Leandro vs. State of NC, a lawsuit that argues North Carolina must adequately fund public schools to meet the State Constitution’s requirement to provide a sound basic education to every student, no matter where they live. The lawsuit was upheld by the NC Supreme Court in 1997. The ruling stated that NC should provide hundreds of millions more dollars to local public schools each year to ensure all kids in the state can get a good education. But three decades later, funds still have not been released, and the case is now up for reconsideration for the fourth time.
Despite daily challenges like mold and systemic challenges like the stalled Leandro case, Down Home and coalition partners remain optimistic about the future of North Carolina’s public schools.
“North Carolinians care about public schools,” Todd says, “because most of us went to public schools and many of us are parents of public school children today. It’s amazing what our coalition has been able to do in the current environment. So much more is possible here!”
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