Bands of Ashley High School · NHCS
Student Brief
NC General Assembly visit — May 20, 2026. What the issues are, why they matter, and how to think about them as a student.
You do not need to be an expert on every issue. The most important thing you bring tomorrow is your own experience as a student.
Lawmakers hear policy positions all the time. What makes those positions matter is hearing directly from people who live them.
You are not there to repeat someone else’s opinion. You are there to understand the issues, think about how they connect to your own experience, and begin forming your own views. It is completely fine to say, “I’m still learning about this,” or “From my experience as a student, this is what I’ve noticed.”
- “I think this issue matters because ______.”
- “From my experience as a student, I have seen ______.”
- “I support / question / want to learn more about this because ______.”
- “One thing I would want legislators to understand is ______.”
The 12 Issues
— Mr. Parker
Research Brief
Full background on each priority. Read as much or as little as you want.
Primary source: NHCS Legislative Priorities →
What NHCS is asking for
New Hanover County Schools publicly frames its legislative agenda around academic excellence, workforce sustainability, student well-being, and family and community access. The school board approved its legislative agenda in early May 2026 on a 6–1 vote.
One practical note: NHCS's public materials are not perfectly synchronized. The district's main legislative priorities webpage reflects the twelve items in the cards above, but a printable one-page handout from the same page appears to reflect an older version that omits the statewide public school bond and funding-in-arrears items. Use the board webpage as your main reference.
A useful way to read the agenda: some items are new-money asks for people and services, some request changes to how the state allocates money, and some ask to loosen rules so the district can operate with more local control. A salary ask, a capital bond, a calendar law change, and a funding-formula revision all move through state government differently.
Forming your own position
A useful way to sort the twelve items:
High-confidence support if your lens is student access and prevention: Pre-K expansion, CEP meal expansion, MTSS coordinators, and EC weighted funding. Each tries to solve problems earlier, closer to students, and with fewer barriers before they become much more expensive later.
Support, but ask hard implementation questions: support staff, Be Pro Be Proud, calendar flexibility, and funding in arrears. These are generally sensible, but the benefits depend heavily on execution.
Capital and compensation priorities where values matter as much as evidence: mid-career teacher pay, lottery repair funding, IBEC building funding, and a statewide school bond. These asks are rational, but they depend more on your beliefs about how North Carolina should divide responsibility between state and local government.
One concise standard for all twelve: support the items that remove direct barriers to student learning, protect strong educators from avoidable attrition, and fix structural funding problems rather than temporarily patching them. Be more skeptical of items that spend money without changing the underlying system.
Open questions and limitations
NHCS's own public-facing agenda materials are slightly inconsistent. The main webpage and the printable one-page handout do not list exactly the same priorities. Use the board webpage and current board discussion as the main reference, not the older handout alone.
Some priorities are conceptually clear but not yet fully specified in public NHCS materials—especially the IBEC building item, the statewide public school bond item, and the exact legislative vehicle for EC rollout. NHCS's public documents signal support but do not fully spell out preferred bill language, dollar amounts, or sequencing.
The agenda is a statement of priorities, not proof that the General Assembly will act on each item in the form NHCS prefers. In several areas—calendar law, EC funding, and public school finance mechanics—the district is operating inside a moving state policy environment rather than asking for change from a blank slate.