© 2026 Blue Ridge Public Radio
Blue Ridge Mountains banner background
Your source for information and inspiration in Western North Carolina.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Notice - Brevard 101.5 BPR News, and 90.5 BPR Classic - Intermittent power issues - Notice

The Year In NC Education News

Education reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip covered a bevy of topics in 2018. They share their biggest stories of the year.
Education reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip covered a bevy of topics in 2018. They share their biggest stories of the year.
Education reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip covered a bevy of topics in 2018. They share their biggest stories of the year.
Credit Michael Cline Spencer / For WUNC
Education reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip covered a bevy of topics in 2018. They share their biggest stories of the year.

Education and school safety were top of mind both locally and nationally this year. WUNC reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip covered everything from the Silent Sam protests to the student-led walkouts after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

WUNC reporters Liz Schlemmer and Lisa Phillip join host Frank Stasio for a North Carolina education news review.

They join host Frank Stasio to share their education reporting from 2018. Phillip gives the latest on the controversy around the confederate Silent Sam statue and the newly formed commission that will now decide its fate. She also shares her reporting on the problem school resource officers may pose for minority students who, instead of being sent to the principal’s office or getting suspended, are winding up with criminal records. Schlemmer looks back at the teacher strike for higher wages and the student-led protests in response to the Parkland school shooting. The two also reflect on how Hurricane Florence impacted the state’s public school system and share analysis that ranges from the storm’s financial toll to the emotional and educational impact it had on students and teachers.  

Copyright 2018 North Carolina Public Radio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Dana is an award-winning producer who began as a personality at Rock 92. Once she started creating content for morning shows, she developed a love for producing. Dana has written and produced for local and syndicated commercial radio for over a decade. WUNC is her debut into public radio and she’s excited to tell deeper, richer stories.