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Kisha Clemons, principal of Shuford Elementary School in the Newton-Conover City School district, was named the 2020 Wells Fargo North Carolina Principal of the Year at an awards luncheon today in Cary.
Nearly three dozen charter schools across North Carolina have been awarded five-year grants ranging from $300,000 to $900,000 by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to attract and enroll more educationally disadvantaged students.
More than 50 school districts across North Carolina will be replacing older school buses with new, more environmentally friendly models under the state’s initial share of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s settlement with Volkswagen for unlawfully cheating on vehicle emissions. 
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded the N.C. Department of Public Instruction a $17.6 million grant to develop innovative instructional approaches to better meet student needs during disruptions to schooling such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Maureen M. Stover, a science teacher at Cumberland International Early College High School, was named the 2020 Burroughs Wellcome Fund North Carolina Teacher of the Year during an awards luncheon today held outside a Cary hotel with a small group of attendees. Stover was selected from a field of nine finalists representing the state’s eight education districts and charter schools. 
Today, the State Board of Education approved the N.C. Department of Public Instruction’s Lighting Our Way Forward: North Carolina's Guidebook for Reopening Public Schools and a summary with navigation links to the full document. The operational strategies were developed by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, in conjunction with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, teachers, support staff, local education leaders, and others, to assist the state’s public schools and communities as they develop reopening plans for the 2020-21 school year.
More than 900,000 North Carolina students rely on the nutritious meals and snacks served during the school year through the School Breakfast, School Lunch, and Afterschool Meals programs. But hunger doesn't take a summer break, especially this summer, when social distancing is necessary to help prevent the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19).
The State Board of Education approved the allocation of $70 million today from federal CARES Act funds for school districts and charter schools to provide summer programs aimed at helping elementary students who were in kindergarten through fourth grades during the 2019-20 school year needing extra instruction in reading or math because of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meeting while demonstrations nationwide continue over the death of George Floyd, members of the N.C. State Board of Education today issued an urgent call to action to eliminate inequities and racism from the state’s public schools. Board Chairman Eric Davis opened the board’s regular monthly meeting by invoking Floyd’s name as an alarming wake-up call that exposes the “systemic practices which continue to plague our nation and result in the physical and mental deaths many black and brown citizens experience every day.”
The board’s action follows COVID-19 legislation by the General Assembly earlier this month that mandated the development of the remote instruction plans to ensure quality teaching and learning outside the traditional classroom. The legislation required that the plans address a number of issues, ranging from parent involvement and effective instruction to equitable access and provisions for monitoring student attendance.