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North Carolina Says $688 Million Needed For School Safety Staffing

KERI BROWN/WFDD

North Carolina education officials say they will need almost $700 million more in state funding to adequately improve school safety. This comes on the heels of a student being shot at a school near Charlotte.

Staff at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction estimate it would cost $688 million to hire additional nurses, social workers, counselors and school resource officers to achieve nationally recommended ratios for North Carolina's public schools.

The News and Observer reports DPI wants to reach that goal in the next eight or nine years.

To that end, the department will request just over $71 million dollars for those new positions in next year's budget.

Safety concerns have risen following a national wave of recent school shootings. On Monday, a 16-year-old was fatally shot by a fellow student at a high school in Matthews, a suburb of Charlotte.  

State lawmakers approved an extra $35 million this year for school safety efforts, which is far less than the $130 million Gov. Roy Cooper had requested.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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