by Thomas Goldsmith on Thu, Nov 9, 2017
Wake County public middle and high school students will skip a statewide tobacco-use survey this year for the first time since 1999. And county commissioners, irate over of the loss of data about an important health risk, are calling school board members to a special meeting on the matter.
Wake County Board of Commissioners chairman Sig Hutchinson said Thursday that he intended to take the matter up at a work session Monday. However, Board of Education Chairwoman Monika Johnson-Hostler and Vice Chairwoman Christine Kushner, who were invited to attend, will be at a state school board association meeting in Greensboro, according to a WCPSS spokesman.
“I’m going to be talking about it on Monday, but the school system will be another time,” Hutchinson said Thursday afternoon.
Earlier, Hutchinson told the INDY, “WCPSS says they’re not going to do it this year,” Hutchinson says. “They’re telling me it takes away from instructional time. This would do away with trend data they’ve collected since 1999, and it involves the state data because Wake County students are one-tenth of the students in North Carolina.”