Editor’s Note: The following editorial appeared Sunday, June 15 in the Greensboro News & Record and the Winston-Salem Journal. It is reprinted here with permission. 

In the 1993 film “The Fugitive,” which you may have seen one of the hundred million times it has aired on cable TV, the title character, played by Harrison Ford, is cornered on the edge of a spillway in a towering dam.

“I didn’t kill my wife,” he tells a U.S. marshal, played by Tommy Lee Jones.

“I don’t care,” Jones replies.

So Ford casts himself into the air in a desperate leap you could only survive in a movie.

That cinematic moment comes to mind as the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature continues to bleed the state’s public school systems of precious money and resources.

It’s not just the act of slowly killing public schools that’s galling; it’s the manner in which they’re doing it: up front and out in the open.

They don’t care. And they don’t care if you know they don’t care.

They don’t care that Guilford County Schools are struggling to retain teachers, to repair rickety buildings and to pay cafeteria workers and other staff members decent wages.

They don’t care that Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools are struggling to fill a $42 million budget deficit.

They don’t care that Wake County Schools have been forced to make roughly $20 million in cuts to teacher pay supplements and support staff.

They don’t care that a judge ordered them decades ago to do right by schools in funding.

They don’t care how it looks for them to lavish more than half a billion dollars on private school vouchers, even for well-off-families, as public schools begin to wither on the vine.

They don’t care that most of that voucher money goes to students already enrolled in private schools.They don’t care that North Carolina now ranks 43rd in the nation for average teacher pay, down five spots from the previous year and, in case you’re wondering, behind Georgia (23), Alabama (33), South Carolina (36), Tennessee (38) and Kentucky (42).

They don’t care that the state also ranks 39th for starting teacher salaries.They don’t care that they hold private schools to less stringent standards — actually, hardly any standards at all — than their public counterparts. Here’s your voucher check, no questions asked.

And it all appears to be by design.

The challenge before us now isn’t convincing lawmakers to care. That bus left the school parking lot a long time ago.

The challenge is getting you to care.

How is it, for instance, that Guilford County voters keep saying no to a quarter-cent sales tax increase that would go to public schools?

But public schools matter, even if you have no children in school.

They help promote economic development and job growth by enriching the quality of the labor pool.

They attract new residents. They help lift children out of poverty and keep them away from crime. And they enrich the cultural fabric of their communities.

Then there’s the question of what lawmakers are doing with your tax money.

In Forsyth County, a total of nearly $18.5 million in taxpayer (read: your) money went to 3,355 students for private-school tuition during then 2024-25 school year. Among 25 schools, seven received at least $1 million and three — Calvary Day School, Gospel Light Christian and Salem Baptist Christian — received more than $2 million in taxpayer (your) money.

In Guilford, the numbers were even more stunning: a total of $24 million to more than 4,300 students in 31 schools, with High Point’s Wesleyan Academy leading the way with $3.3 million.

Millions with no accountability attached and no limits on how much household recipients’ families earn.

So, this comes down to whether you care.

Whether you’re willing to vote down a quarter-cent sales tax increase while lawmakers funnel your money to people who don’t need it.

And whether you believe in the mission and the value of public schools..

What you think matters because, if you care, politicians will care because they want to be reelected.

So, let them know you know what they’re up to and that it’s wrong.

Don’t let them tilt the scales toward a privileged few on your dime.

Don’t let them get away with slowly starving public schools to death while blaming them for being hungry.