North Carolina superintendent race reignites controversial debate over cameras in classrooms
The controversial issue of whether to require cameras in classrooms has emerged as a flashpoint in the politically charged race to be the top public education official in North Carolina.
The controversial issue of whether to require cameras in classrooms has emerged as a flashpoint in the politically charged race to be the top public education official in North Carolina.
Republican candidate Michele Morrow — a conservative activist with a history of incendiary online comments and who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot — has called for classroom cameras as part of a campaign that more broadly advocates for so-called parental rights. Her Democratic opponent, Mo Green, the former superintendent of the third-largest school district in the state, has opposed cameras.
The issue has helped define the starkly different candidates in the contest to become North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction — a job that oversees the state’s public schools, along with a $12 billion budget and 1.4 million students — in a race that has already featured the unearthing of Morrow’s past support for conspiracy theories and explosive social media posts.
“We have got to have a video surveillance system. That is not only going to protect our students, it’s going to protect our teachers as well,” Morrow said in a February interview with the “Real Talk Podcast,” a political show that focuses on law enforcement issues, “so that we can actually see what’s happening in the classrooms.”
During another interview that month, she painted her support for video surveillance in public school classrooms as part of a strategy to make schools “the safest buildings in our entire state.”
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