carolinapublicpress.org – Lucas Thomae – 2025-08-06 08:14:00

by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
August 6, 2025

Former Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran continues to fall deeper into legal trouble. Two weeks ago, he was arrested again and charged with second-degree forcible rape according to filings in Swain Superior Court.

The embattled sheriff left office last month after being arrested and charged in both North Carolina and tribal court for committing sex crimes against a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Cochran faced state criminal charges of sexual battery, assault on a female, solicitation of prostitution and felonious restraint. He was indicted in Swain Superior Court on July 21.

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The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians also charged Cochran with violations of the Cherokee Code for the same assault — one count of abusive sexual contact and two counts of oppression in office. The tribe can charge non-Indian perpetrators with certain crimes as authorized by the Violence Against Women Act in 2022.

The most comprehensive account of the investigation leading up to Cochran’s first arrest was included in District Attorney Ashley Hornsby Welch’s petition to remove Cochran from office, which was voluntarily rescinded after Cochran announced his retirement on July 3.

According to that complaint, a Cherokee woman reported to the police on June 22 that Cochran had sexually assaulted her and attempted to pay her for oral sex inside his own police vehicle. That prompted an investigation involving state and federal law enforcement. On June 23, a Cherokee Indian Police officer pulled over Cochran inside the Qualla Boundary and found him with another woman (not Cherokee) who later told investigators that she had been similarly assaulted.

Both women, according to the court filings, were picked up by Cochran on the side of the road under the guise of him offering them a ride.

Rape added to Cochran’s list of charges

The second degree rape charge involves a third woman not mentioned in previous court filings. She does not appear to be Cherokee, and no additional charges have been filed against Cochran in tribal court.

As of now, the details of this latest offense are sparse.

Cochran was arrested again on July 21 after being indicted on the rape charge — the same day that he was indicted for the four other charges brought against him. He was released on a $50,000 bond under the conditions that he would not leave the state, not contact the rape victim and not commit any more crimes.

All of the alleged assaults Cochran is accused of occurred in June of this year, and all three victims have previous arrest records with the Swain County Sheriff’s Office during the time that Cochran led the department.

Welch’s office declined to comment on whether they suspect that more women have been victimized by Cochran, but said that possible victims should contact the State Bureau of Investigation.

Ex-sheriff’s son involved in curious traffic stop

Travis Cochran, a trooper with the State Highway Patrol and son of the former sheriff, pulled over one of Curtis Cochran’s alleged victims on July 18 according to a publicly available court filing.

The younger Cochran assessed the woman a traffic violation for not wearing her seatbelt and wrote in the citation that there were “no problems” during the interaction.

The woman was named in the petition for removal as the non-Cherokee woman found in Cochran’s vehicle on June 23. He has not so far been charged in the alleged assault on her, but she was a witness in the investigation leading up to his arrest.

Unlike the other two named victims, there is no court order barring Cochran from contacting this woman. However, the incident does raise questions related to conflict of interests or potential witness tampering when it comes to Cochran’s criminal case.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment on the matter, stating that they did not comment on pending cases. Neither the State Highway Patrol nor Curtis Cochran, through his attorney, responded to inquiries from CPP prior to the publication of this article.

Curtis Cochran’s next hearing for the state criminal charges is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sept. 24 at the Swain County Courthouse in Bryson City. He is set to make his next appearance in Tribal Court in Cherokee at 9 a.m. on Sept. 29.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Cochran, former sheriff of Swain Co., NC, faces more legal trouble appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The content is a straightforward news report focusing on the legal issues involving a former sheriff, Curtis Cochran, without evident editorializing or partisan language. It presents facts from official sources and court proceedings, maintaining an objective tone without endorsing or opposing any political ideology. The balanced presentation and lack of politically charged commentary indicate a centrist bias, aiming to inform rather than persuade.

www.youtube.com – WPDE ABC15 – 2025-08-06 06:15:09

SUMMARY: Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but Ghislaine Maxwell remains imprisoned as investigations continue. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed over a dozen high-profile figures, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Attorneys General Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Merrick Garland, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzalez, and former FBI Director James Comey, probing the Epstein case. Prosecutor Alex Acosta, responsible for Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal, was notably not subpoenaed. The committee demands unredacted Justice Department documents by August 19. The Trump administration may release Maxwell’s recent interview transcript, where she denied witnessing wrongdoing by Trump. Maxwell was recently moved to a less restrictive prison camp.

“Administration officials are currently discussing whether to release the transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” according to the media outlet.

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carolinapublicpress.org – Kate Denning – 2025-08-05 09:17:00

by Kate Denning, Carolina Public Press
August 5, 2025

Alpha School, an “AI-powered” private school, is preparing to make its mark on Charlotte and Raleigh this year. 

North Carolina is part of an expansion into five additional states this fall for the private school company, which currently operates Texas and Florida. It plans to expand into Puerto Rico in 2026. 

How does the school operate, and what do education experts have to say about it?

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Co-founder MacKenzie Price told Carolina Public Press a typical day at Alpha begins with a 15 minute exercise to get students excited for the day and encourage a growth mindset. These exercises are led by Alpha’s classroom guides — at Alpha, there are no teachers. Then students transition to a two-hour learning block where they split that time between core subjects like math, reading, science and language. This is conducted entirely via AI software and apps.

By lunchtime, students are done with their academic work for the day. The rest of the day is spent learning life skills like leadership, public speaking, financial literacy and entrepreneurship through workshops led by the guides.

Alpha utilizes a mastery-based approach to learning, so children in the same classroom could all be on different levels of the same lesson depending on how each child moves through the material. The AI “tutor” is designed to recognize what each student is grasping well and what they need more work on. 

“Let’s say you only need five repetitions of a concept to understand that concept,” Price said. “I teach you a basic lesson on fractions, and then I give you five problems, and you show ‘yeah, I understand this well,’ then you move forward to the next concept. 

“But if I need 15 repetitions to understand that, then I shouldn’t only get five or 10. I should be able to get 15. That’s the beauty of personalized learning — each child does have a tutor that is going at their pace.”

Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools Stephanie Keaney said this is a strategy known as differentiation, which teachers have done for decades. But instead of teachers or Alpha’s guides, it’s artificial intelligence.

While students are taught a standard common core curriculum, they aren’t being given traditional grades. K-8 students’ progress is measured three times a year through the Northwest Evaluation Association’s MAP assessment test. High school students’ success is tracked by SAT scores and Advance Placement exams. 

The North Carolina campuses each come with a $45,000 price tag and will offer K-3 for the first year of operation with plans to expand to K-8 during its second year. Price said students are already enrolled in Charlotte and Raleigh, and families are eagerly awaiting their first day at Alpha.

Krista Glazewski, the executive director of NC State’s Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, said there is a long history of AI in the classroom. It’s important to acknowledge the historical use of intelligent tutoring software to not cause confusion and to be clear about some of its limitations, she said.

“Some of the limitations are that they have a narrow area of scope,” Glazewski said. “Intelligent tutoring isn’t always going to be sensitive to the kind of learning that might be happening, so it certainly would not be the only thing that you would want to use in a learning environment. 

“Alpha’s not saying that’s their only instructional model. In fact, if I’m bringing my lens to what they’re doing, I think they would argue that they are able to select from some impactful instructional models. … I would say they’re probably choosing the best from different instructional pedagogical models and applying them in some thoughtful and seemingly creative ways.”

Glazewski has been researching AI in education for more than a decade, but she is also a parent herself, so she understands hesitancy and skepticism about using AI for learning. 

When implementing more technology into education, she said it’s important to ensure schools are using it thoughtfully to meet specific goals and for the purpose it was intended. Schools should also take steps to ensure student privacy is protected.

“We are now going to have a generation of learners that are going to have metrics and instrumentation about their learning that could follow them throughout their whole schooling career, so we want to make sure that the right day data privacy agreements are in place, that those agreements are held if companies either fold or are reserved into other companies,” Glazewski said. 

“We want to make sure that over a child’s life in schooling, that they are not being monitored in a way that parents haven’t consented to and that their information is not being used in ways that, again, parents haven’t consented to.”

As a parent, Glazewski said she would be wondering what the guides are doing to support her child’s social emotional growth, curiosity and development. Price said since the guides are not directly teaching the academics, they are fully dedicated to providing motivational and emotional support to students.

When people hear of AI in education, they often think of robots in front of a classroom teaching students, Price said. But she said the technology actually makes it so this is the opposite of true.

“What artificial intelligence is allowing us to do is create personalized learning programs that meet a student at the level and pace that is best for that student, and it allows our teachers to be able to focus on that emotional and motivational aspect of a student, which is critical to creating a successful learner,” Price said. 

“What it’s really enabling is our teachers to be able to do what only humans can do, which is connect with the child and get to know that child and help them develop their interests and growth mindset strategies.”

When it comes to innovation in education, Glazewski said it’s critical to explore promising creative approaches to learning. But that also means asking questions like how can we ensure everyone has access to innovative instructional models, what would this look like if it was implemented on a broader level and what metrics are we basing “promising” models on?

Alpha markets eye-catching statistics like its students’ ability to learn two times as much content in two hours as their peers do and consistently placing in the 99th percentile. Glazewski said parents should consider whether these results are tied to true academic progress or an inherent selection bias that comes along with the school’s hefty tuition.

“At that kind of price point, what we can readily infer is that that’s a very narrow demographic,” Glazewski said. “So I would be interested in the question of selection effects here, whether these outcomes are due to the program itself or the background and the abilities of the learners that they’re admitting.”

Price isn’t yet sure whether Alpha’s North Carolina campuses will be able to collect school vouchers, which have been the subject of controversy after recent changes to North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarships. She is personally a fan of school choice, however, and is hopeful Alpha will be able to participate in the program. 

It’s possible North Carolina is seeing a rise in new education options like Alpha because of the loosening of restrictions on school vouchers, Glazewski said. Being a private institution also  means more freedom to implement innovative approaches and cutting edge technology that would take much longer to approve and fund in public districts. 

While every independent school is different and has its own approach, many private schools and educators are leveraging AI to better their classrooms in some way, Keaney said. Because independent schools are consistently smaller than an entire public school district, they have the opportunity to be more nimble and offer more autonomy to teachers in the classroom.

Artificial intelligence sometimes scares people off, but Price said it’s the most exciting development in education right now because of its benefits to both students and teachers and the ability to give back the most valuable resource — time.

“There has never been a more exciting time to be a five year old than now because of what’s going to be available through artificial intelligence,” Price said. 

“I also think this is going to be the best era for teachers, because teachers are finally going to be freed up to be able to spend their time doing what they do best, which is connect with students, instead of having to plan time doing lecturing and lesson planning and grading papers and homework. This is a really wonderful time in education.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post AI-powered private school set to open NC campuses appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article presents an informative and balanced overview of the AI-powered private school Alpha School without showing a clear political leaning. It covers the potential benefits of AI in education, such as personalized learning and increased teacher-student interaction, while also addressing concerns like access inequality, data privacy, and skepticism about the use of AI. The discussion of school vouchers is presented with factual context and notes the controversy without endorsing a specific viewpoint. Overall, the coverage is objective and analytical, reflecting a centrist stance focused on education innovation rather than political ideology.