May 26, 2015

N.C. Sen. Joel Ford said he had recently been at a middle school where one of the principal’s “primary challenges” is her students’ mental health issues, which get in the way of their learning. Teachers, he said, are being asked to deal with mental health and poverty issues for which they were not trained.

“We’ve got too many elected officials in this room who look like me… from a federal level, from a state level, from a county, from a city and from a school board level, we’ve got to start moving the resources in a way that we can start making some progress.

“And I’m going to say this to you publicly: If we can’t do that, there’s no need for me to continue to go to Raleigh. There’s no need for me to continue to take away from my family if we’re not going to work together to solve some of these problems….

“We’ve got to start taking our elected positions a little bit more seriously to actually get something done for our community.”

Ford’s full comments are below.