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Funding our schools will:

  • Give students the tools and resources they need to succeed
  • Keep and attract well-qualified teachers in the schools
  • Provide healthcare resources in each school

Our state government must ensure that all our schools can provide a quality education for every student. This starts with having excellent schools available across North Carolina. It’s time to invest properly in our children’s future.

Invest in Education

All youth deserve high quality public education starting with universal Pre-K. In North Carolina, educator pay is disastrous, technologies are outdated, and school curricula fail to incorporate diversity and inclusion. If we are to thrive in economic growth, safety, health and equity, our public education system needs significant improvement and modernization. The work has been done and the studies have been completed. We can and must lay out a plan to fully fund our public education system for students and teachers from early childhood education to K-12. 

To Christine Kelly, top actions the General Assembly can take are:
  • Follow through on the Leandro Plan, which details a roadmap for funding and policy recommendations to provide all students with access to the “sound basic education” they are owed under our state constitution
  • Work to increase teacher pay based on experience and education, and revisit returning benefits (e.g. post-retirement healthcare coverage) that have been stripped from teachers
  • Increase diversity among teachers by requiring administrations to take Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training with the goal of adjusting their hiring process to attract and hire a more diverse staff. Then set and meet hiring goals to increase teacher diversity, which will also increase student representation.
  • Support bills like House Bill (HB) 1203 (2019-2020) and HB 348 “Add School Nurses for Healthier Students,” which would provide at least one school nurse in every school
  • Recognizing that our schools rely on digital resources as part of their classroom instruction and for outside school work, support legislation that would provide affordable broadband access across NC

To address environmental issues, we need to support:

  • Programs that encourage clean energy using wind and sun as alternatives to consuming more fossil fuels
  • Encourage new development to incorporate more EV Charging stations in residential and commercial projects

Let’s protect our environment in a proactive way.

Protect and Preserve our Environment

Acting to curb our environmental crisis is critical and nonnegotiable. The rapid growth in Southern Wake County is impacting our natural resources and the quality of our water and air. We must create innovative solutions to ensure our community is safe today and into the future. Let’s protect our environment in a proactive way by encouraging clean energy initiatives and addressing the issues that are keeping our environment from being healthy.

As a State Representative, Christine Kelly will:
  • Support the renewable energy programs already in place and look for ways to incentivize our residents and businesses to expand green programs in collaboration with other important state priorities (e.g. tourism)
  • Work tirelessly to pass bills that address historical environmental injustices and curb the pollution disproportionately impacting North Carolina’s communities of color and low-income communities
  • Ensure the NC Environmental Quality Department is well funded to properly manage all of its programs, that it embraces DEI initiatives for attracting staff and helping make department look like our communities, and that Boards and Commissions represent the community and not political party agendas
  • Advocate for re-implementing tax credits (e.g. the NC Renewable Energy Investment Tax Credit) to motivate more residents to utilize green energy
  • Back legislation to bring further reduction in our carbon emissions and work towards carbon neutrality
  • Support offshore wind energy development off our coast, communicating with the N.C. Taskforce for Offshore Wind Economic Resource Strategies for expertise and regular updates surrounding the adoption of this clean energy resource that would help the state achieve our carbon reduction goals.

A focus on healthcare priorities is critical to:

  • Providing healthcare to every North Carolinian
  • Decreasing the cost burden for individuals, families, and businesses
  • Preparing our children to take care of themselves
Accessible and Affordable Healthcare

Access to basic healthcare for all should be a priority for our state. 
This means not only expanding Medicaid in North Carolina but also funding health facilities in all corners of our state and reducing the cost of services and prescriptions. With NC having so many resources and being the 9th largest state for population, being ranked 41st for health care quality is inexcusable and needs to be addressed at the NCGA.

Christine Kelly understands that we must:
  • Close the current coverage gap for those who are not eligible for Medicaid
  • Support the work of the Joint Legislative Committee on Access to Healthcare and Medicaid Expansion as they search for ways to expand healthcare access to those most in need
  • Help small businesses with programs that provide cost-effective health insurance plans for employees
  • Work with prescription drug companies to lower the costs of drug prices
  • Support programs like those proposed in SB 249 and HB 277 to modernize nursing regulations and attract and keep great nurses in our state
  • Advocate for more hospitals and comprehensive healthcare in rural counties
  • Providing comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education in our public schools and access to affordable birth control
  • Keeping decisions about one’s health (reproductive and otherwise) between a patient and their doctor alone, without ever inserting elected officials into the picture

Having a safe community starts with:

  • Responsible gun ownership. Christine fully supports the 2nd Amendment and the right to have a gun. In our community, we need to bring forth common sense, responsible gun safety measures that protect our citizens and promote public safety.
  • Supporting efforts to address social justice and equality gaps so that all people are protected as stated in our founding principles. That includes supporting the ERA resolution, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and denouncing all forms of racism.
  • Investigating what communities most affected by violent crime need in order to repair and reduce harm. Violent crime is a symptom of systemic dysfunction, and is the responsibility of those in power to solve, instead of solely placing the blame on individuals.
Community Safety

At the end of the day, people want to feel safe where they live, work, learn, and play. Everyone deserves the very same.

The term “safe community” should mean safe for all. Many NC counties, including Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs, get recognition as being rated as safe communities by a number of publications and agencies. However, Christine’s experience in talking to residents is that not everyone feels safe. Until everyone can feel safe, there is work to do. 

As State Representative, Christine Kelly will work in support of:
  • Legislation that reduces gun violence and the fear of gun violence in public places
  • Common sense gun ownership, strong regulations on gun purchases, and support for victims of gun violence
  • Ensure Student Resource Officer (SRO) programs are efficient, cohesive, and committed to building a positive relationship between law enforcement, school administrators, families, and students. While SROs work for the masses, it’s those in the most vulnerable groups who share their personal issues with their SROs.
  • A Non-Discrimination Ordinance at the state level, requesting that the funds be set aside in support of this action
  • More and more transparency from law enforcement
  • Police departments that educate the public that they are there to serve in a non-discrimination capacity and reward their staff for modeling the right ways to serve their residents
  • Bills such as SB 565 Supporting Law Enforcement and SB566 Investing in Law Enforcement

Our district’s map was recently redrawn because of issues with gerrymandering. With the map now set, it’s time to:

  • Ensure voters are educated on the ways they can vote in upcoming elections
  • Protect voters from being intimidated at the polls
  • Stop suppression initiatives that disproportionately target people of color, students, the elderly, LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities.
Fair Elections & Voting Rights

Democracy works when every eligible voter can have their voice heard in free and fair elections.

Christine Kelly knows that we need and deserve:
  • Election Day voter registration
  • Access to polls for early voting
  • Voting registration modernization
  • To restore voting rights for people with felonies
  • To ratify the Equal Rights Amendment at the state level
  • Penalties for those who knowingly intimate or commit fraud against voters
  • Support for those who unknowingly vote when they did not know they were purged from voting
  • Increased access to translation services at the polls and easily translatable state forms and services
  • An independent, non-partisan redistricting commission for the next time we have our maps redrawn. Having maps drawn by politicians will generally lead to partisan efforts not allowing for voters’ voices to be heard.