Again, from the editorial page of the News and Observer:

It’s true that the education plan is a heap of money, $150 billion, and that it would indeed enlarge the federal government’s financial participation in education, an area historically left to the states and the country’s 15,000 public school systems. But these are exceptional times. And here is what public schools are facing because of tapped-out state and local budgets: out-of-date and crowded buildings, teacher shortages, all manner of program cuts, classrooms overbooked.

I want to address the issues of “out-of-date and crowded buildings, teacher shortages, all manner of program cuts, classrooms overbooked.” There is nothing “exceptional” about these issues.

Some school buildings are out-of-date and crowded, and a number of the school systems that have out-of-date or crowded schools have passed school construction bonds recently. In other words, they addressed the problem on their own. And don’t forget all of that lottery money!!!

North Carolina has teacher shortages every year, yes even in unexceptional times, and our school districts have dealt with them appropriately.

Program cuts are not a bad thing, particularly if those programs are not effective.

“Overbooked” classrooms, which (I assume) means large class sizes, is a problem related to the allocation of human resources. It has nothing to do with the size of the teacher workforce. After all, the student/teacher ratio in North Carolina is around 15:1, depending on the student count used.