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North Carolina’s General Assembly returned to Raleigh this past week for the 2024 “short session” — a session that figures to feature debates on a number of familiar topics – including public and higher education, an impending childcare cliff, and funding for several state agencies that are struggling with staff attrition and vacancies.

One lawmaker likely to be an especially knowledgeable and outspoken participant in these discussions is Mecklenburg County state Senator Natasha Marcus. During her three terms in Raleigh, Marcus has developed into one of the Senate’s leading voices on an array of core issues and recently she sat down with NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield for an extended conversation. In Part One of our chat, we discussed some of the issues at the top of the short session agenda – including K-12 education, childcare, and the struggles of state election officials to cope with staff attrition fueled by inadequate resources and harassment.

In Part Two of our chat, we discussed some other important policy debates impacting state government right now, including the big problems that have arisen with the state’s new eCourts system and some massive increases in premium rates that the insurance industry is seeking approval to impose on owners of manufactured homes.

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There’s a very good argument to be made that the United States should guarantee free and universal early childhood education from birth to all American families. Nations that invest in the care of young children when their minds and bodies are still developing see vastly improved outcomes later on. Sadly, the U.S. is not yet one of those nations. Instead, it consigns millions of pre-Kindergartners each year to a patchwork of private providers of widely varying quality – most of which operate on a financial shoestring.

Those looking to understand this system, its flaws, and the ways in which it should be improved would do well to follow the work of Dr. Steven Barnett at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. Recently, the Institute released its annual State of Preschool report and Barnett shared with NC Newsline how North Carolina fares when it comes to preschool enrollment, funding, and quality.

Read the latest report for North Carolina here.

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