Every community depends on public schools to prepare kids for life. When it comes to improving them, the Public School Forum of North Carolina — an education policy nonprofit based out of Raleigh — recently issued a set of four priorities for the General Assembly as it gets its new session started. To better public schools for the 1.5 million students currently enrolled in them, the group’s top priorities include adequate, equitable, and flexible school funding, increasing teacher salaries, expanding support systems for students, and improved assessment and accountability. The advocacy group’s President and Executive Director Mary Ann Wolf said Orange County is “lucky” because it heavily invests in its local school districts, but she said that is typically because it is making up for what the state is not funding. North Carolina currently ranks 49 out of 50 U.S. states in terms of state funding efforts for public education, and it is also in the bottom three for per-student spendin...