This year, Banned Books Week arrives amid a tumultuous time for communities, schools, and libraries fending off the ever-increasing right-wing campaign to remove books from shelves.
Late last month, the Republican-led General Assembly passed the state’s new $30 billion budget; leading to the long-awaited expansion of Medicaid and the controversial private school vouchers program.
Four in 10 Americans think schools in their communities are not safe from gun violence, according to a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll.
Last month, President Biden announced the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The new office will take steps in reducing gun violence, and implement and expand upon key executive and legislative action which has been taken to save lives.
In the past few weeks, school districts across the state have struggled to implement provisions included in Senate Bill 49, also known as North Carolina’s version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
In recent years, mental health and wellbeing has become increasingly relevant in discussions around education, both in K-12 and university settings. According to a recent study, roughly 70% of students in bachelor’s degree programs contemplate dropping out of college due to emotional stress.
Students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been busy over the last several weeks demanding that legislators in Raleigh take action to stop easy access to guns and find a way to deal with gun violence across the state.
In recent years, extremist groups have set up shop in hundreds of school districts in the U.S. – pushing the wave of book bans, erasure of school curriculum, and measures targeting Black and LGBTQ+ students.
For the longest while in North Carolina, K-12 public schools have been on the struggle bus.
Last month, Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system became one of the first districts in the state to implement measures from North Carolina’s very own version of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.