RALEIGH, N.C. — Gov. Roy Cooper attended the last day of the 2024 Conference on Educational Leadership Friday.

“I think it’s important that we pay attention to what candidates are saying and make sure we support candidates who support our public schools,” Cooper said.

The conference, hosted by the North Carolina Association of School Administrators, allows district and school leaders from across the state to engage with one another and learn from other school districts.

Cooper’s visit comes during what he’s deemed “The Year of Public Schools.” It also comes after the race for N.C. superintendent of public schools, who oversees public schools, is taking the national spotlight.

The Department of Public Instruction is led by Catherine Truitt, a Republican and former schoolteacher. Truitt, who was an education adviser for former Gov. Pat McCrory, was first elected in 2020, succeeded Republican Mark Johnson, who left office to run for lieutenant governor.

As superintendent, Truitt led the state’s over 2,500 public schools through the COVID-19 pandemic. She also advocated for an overhaul to how teachers are licensed that would have increased teacher pay.

Upon taking office in 2021, she created the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration as part of her four-year plan called Operation Polaris. The office was charged with helping school districts spend more $6 billion in federal COVID relief funds and recover learning loss from the pandemic.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt lost narrowly in the Republican primary earlier this month. (AP Photo/Bryan Anderson)

Operation Polaris, the crown jewel of Truitt’s time as superintendent, also focuses on improving literacy, redesigning testing and accountability and “transforming the human capital pipeline.” Truitt advocated for a bill that would have used $100 million to put a nurse in every school across the state.

North Carolina schools have seen improvement under Truitt. Test results in the 2022-23 school year increased in grades 3-8 in both reading and math from the previous school year.

Truitt has also clashed with Cooper, a Democrat, particularly over school choice. Truitt has supported Opportunity Scholarships, which gives students money to attend charter schools, and advocated for school choice since being elected. She said in 2020 that she was in favor of limiting the vouchers to low-income families, but she celebrated earlier this year when income eligibility requirements were removed from the program. 

Cooper has called for the voucher program to be put on pause until public schools are fully funded.

In 2021, Truitt supported a bill that would have banned teaching critical race theory in public schools. She also helped the legislature pass the Parents' Bill of Rights, which restricts LGBTQ books and instruction about gender and sexual identity in K-4 classrooms.

But Truitt sought to delay the implementation of the Parents' Bill of Rights, citing confusion in schools and the need for additional time for her department to implement it.   

That led to backlash from the political right, like Michele Morrow, who just unseated Truitt in this month’s Republican primary. A former nurse and Christian missionary, Morrow lost a 2022 race for a Wake County school board seat. She was also in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Morrow has homeschooled her five children since moving to N.C. and has called the public school system a “socialist indoctrination system.” In a 2022 debate while running for Wake County School board, she said "the whole of the public educational system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people.”

She has been a major proponent of school choice and the Parents' Bill of Rights. Her campaign website says that she led the statewide petition needed to get lawmakers to draft the bill.

She has also said that North Carolina schools are failing and would review school curriculum if elected.

Her website also says she is a leader of statewide groups that exposed and defeated critical race theory in schools. In a response to a candidate survey from iVoterGuide, a conservative voting website, Morrow strongly disagreed with the statement “The Ten Commandments should not be displayed in public school buildings or court houses."

Morrow has embraced QAnon, a far-right conspiracy about the government, and other conspiracy theories in the past.

Recently, Morrow has come under fire for comments on social media between 2019 and 2021 unearthed by CNN in which she called for the execution of prominent Democrats, including Cooper, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In May 2020, responding to a tweet about putting then-President Obama in Guantanamo Bay, she responded “I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad.” After CNN published its findings, Morrow defended her past comments, calling Obama “treasonous.”

If elected, Morrow would oversee all public and charter schools across North Carolina’s 115 school districts and set educational policy priorities. In a February speech, she advocated for a constitutional amendment to abolish the state board of education, which would give more control to the superintendent and Republican-controlled legislature.

When confronted earlier this week by CNN over her past comments, Morrow did not answer the questions. She later posted a video in which she accused CNN reporters of stalking her and said that the reporters were trying to interfere in the 2024 election, asserting they did so in the 2020 election.

“Voters across North Carolina spoke during the primary,” Morrow said in another video. “They’re excited for new leadership to fix the state’s broken education system. They want a return to a time when schools were focused on academic excellence and were the safest buildings in our state.”

Democrats have attempted to capitalize on the new spotlight on the race.

“We should not tolerate this. We cannot accept this. We cannot normalize this type of rhetoric,” said Maurice “Mo” Green, the Democratic nominee for superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction.

Green spent seven years as superintendent of Guilford County Schools, the third largest school district in the state. He touts his successes there as a vision for public schools in N.C. as a whole.

“I want this campaign to be about big ideas for our public schools and how to best implement them,” Green said. “But I cannot let this moment pass for the benefit of our children. Given all that is transpiring in public education in North Carolina, to dismantle it brick by precious brick, coupled with my opponent being one successful election away from being the leader of our public schools, I know that we must make the stakes of this election clear.”

Green’s platform includes additional funding for public schools, appreciating teachers and tailoring education plans for individual students.

Back at the Conference on Educational Leadership, Cooper left his audience on a high note.

“I think the bottom line is that North Carolina public schools rock!” he said.

Morrow and Green will face off in the general election in November.