The NC Senate has a chance to really help teachers. Do it. | Opinion

Teacher pay

North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger doesn’t know what it felt like for the hundreds of over-achieving teachers who were just finishing up their advanced degrees when he and the N.C. legislature pulled the rug out from under them in 2013 by taking away the master’s degree pay bump. They earned it and Berger helped take it away. Please do the right thing and reinstate it — as the House budget proposes to do.

Jack Williams, Cary

War on street food

The writer is a street food vendor.

Raleigh City Council has aggressively sought to stamp out street food vendors on Glenwood South who lend color and treats to the popular nightclub scene. A 2021 ordinance and June update call for all street food vendors to close at 1:15 a.m — akin to telling luncheonettes to close at noon.

Clubs can sell alcohol until 2 a.m., but if food is sold after 1: 15 a.m. vendors are threatened with arrest, even those operating on private club property. Sensible measures have worked — like decibel restrictions for sound systems and prohibitions on loud vehicles. But food carts were never to blame.

Perhaps police are only doing their job when they close down vendors, but it was police leadership that convinced council that shuttering us would somehow magically solve the problem of thousands of people leaving the clubs at 2 a.m. and hitting the streets all at once. The council bought that fairy tale.

Alex Gromow, Raleigh

Coastal areas

Regarding “Change threatening coastal Native American sites cut from NC bill. Here’s what replaced it,” (June 19):

Even though this controversial (Republican, of course) bill has been updated, what it ignores is that the ocean is rising and getting hotter and the ground there is probably sinking so any houses put in these areas may well be gone within decades, having erased thousands of years of information about North Carolina’s history. It would be doing the people who might buy houses there, as well as the rest of us, a favor to prevent that.

Neil Stahl, Chapel Hill

School vouchers

Now that the Opportunity Scholarship program has no income caps, the diversion of taxpayer money from public to private schools is complete. Thanks to our legislature, our public school system is no longer a leader in public education in the South. Most of the schools receiving vouchers, use a Biblical world view curriculum not accepted by major universities. Our public school curriculum is accepted by every college in America.

Not only is taxpayer money wasted on schools with no accountability or evidence of scholastic achievement, but an analysis of state data by the NC Justice Center in 2023 revealed 43 instances in which a school received more vouchers than it had students.

Bonnie Bechard, Wilmington

Thanks, DMV

The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles has been backlogged lately. Sure, it takes months to land an appointment for a simple driver’s license renewal. The earliest ones available now are in September in locations far from Raleigh.

But a recent morning held a pleasant surprise when I was able to renew my license in 17 minutes flat at the DMV location in north Raleigh.

Better still, the place was clean, bright and welcoming and the staff could not have been nicer or more accommodating.

Way to go DMV, way to go.

Mike Hoyt, Raleigh

Clean air

As N.C. Field Organizer at Moms Clean Air Force, I have worked to fight for a better climate for our kids. On April 25, the EPA finalized rules limiting the amount of dangerous air pollution that spews from coal-fired power plants. These protections are critical. Exposure to the pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants can have profoundly negative impacts on public health.

Duke Energy’s carbon plan specifies their intent to extend gas production throughout North Carolina with large-scale gas facilities, instead of investing further in cheaper and cleaner alternatives.

Under EPA’s new rules, Duke Energy will have to abide by new standards but it could take years before they are effectively implemented.

As a community, we need to use our voices on this issue. North Carolina’s children deserve every chance to breathe clean air and live in a healthy environment.

Chelsea Lyons, Madison

This story was originally published June 23, 2024 at 5:30 AM with the headline "The NC Senate has a chance to really help teachers. Do it. | Opinion."