The North Carolina Flyover – The 2025-26 school year is officially underway in North Carolina, with new schools and policies addressing growth, smartphone usage, codes of conduct, and grade promotion.
Around 161,000 students returned to class in Wake County, where four new schools opened and high schoolers are now required to store phones and other wireless devices out of sight and disconnect smartwatches from smartphones.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools welcomed 141,000 students on Monday amid staffing shortages for teaching and bus driver positions. CMS is also banning cellphone use during instructional hours.
Asheville City Schools will now require students to store their cellphones during class across all grades. The district also updated its code of conduct to include 11 behavior expectations and introduced a grade promotion policy that requires reading and math assessments to advance to sixth and eighth grade.