ASHEVILLE - First Lady of the United States Melania Trump paid a visit to an elementary school in Ashe County on Sept. 15, praising the community's resiliency during Tropical Storm Helene and offering STEM education as a path to economic opportunity in a rural county where poverty remains widespread, even as critics of her husband's education policies say technology and cannot substitute for sustained investment in public schools.
Trump visited Mountain View Elementary in Jefferson to promote community resilience and education technology, nearly two years after the storm devastated parts of Western North Carolina. The trip marked her first return to the region since she and President Donald Trump toured Helene damage in January 2025.
“Knowledge
is power,” Trump told a crowd of mostly schoolchildren. “Knowledge gives everyone in this town a chance to move beyond Helene, and to imagine the possibilities. It gives the next generation the choice to help create a beautiful world in the future, a better America.”
The visit put a national spotlight on a small mountain school system that has spent the past two years trying to recover from disaster while preparing students for jobs that increasingly demand technological skills.
A school built for resilience
Mountain View Principal Jerry Graybeal said the school's role changed almost overnight after Helene. Students across Ashe County ultimately missed 33 days after the Sept. 27, 2024 storm, leaving the district with only 99 days of in-person instruction.
With classes suspended, Mountain View’s gymnasium became a distribution center. Supplies poured in from across the country, filling hallways and covering tables in the gym. Families could take what they needed, while volunteers restocked the building at night for the next day's arrivals.
“It was like a mini Walmart,” Graybeal told the Citizen Times.
Damage elsewhere in Ashe County was far worse. Graybeal said roads in the upper end of the county washed away, forcing deliveries of food and supplies by four-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters. A river he said normally runs 1 or 2 feet deep reached roughly 25 feet after heavy rain had already saturated the region before Helene arrived.
Despite that disruption, Ashe County Schools has maintained relatively strong academic results. Ashe County High School's graduation rate topped 90% in spring 2025, while Ashe County Early College earned an A and a performance score of 86 on the state's 2024-25 report card.
Mountain View itself earned a C and a performance score of 63 for 2024-25 while meeting expected academic growth, according to North Carolina's school report card. Its math and reading performance scores were 65 and 63, respectively.
Superintendent Eisa Cox, now in her seventh year leading Ashe County Schools, said the district's results place it in the state's top 10 despite being the only fully Community Eligibility Provision district in that group. She tied that status to the county's poverty, noting that every student receives free breakfast and lunch. The district also sees technology as a way to connect students with skilled jobs at local employers including GE Aerospace.
For Cox, Trump's visit could help a rural system attract resources and partnerships that are often easier to find in larger districts.
“And so we want to make sure that, through this visit, we highlight what rural students are capable of, and how they can be just as competitive as everyone else, without leaving their roots behind,” Cox told the Citizen Times at the event.
Public schools, private dollars
The emphasis on technology and opportunity comes amid a larger debate over the direction of public education under President Trump.
In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of the U.S. Department of Education to the maximum extent permitted by law and return more authority to states and local communities.
Days earlier, the department announced a reduction in force that it said would shrink its workforce from 4,133 employees to about 2,183. A Department of Education inspector general review released in 2026 found staffing had fallen by at least 1,579 employees, or 40%, during the initial changes and that several eliminated suboffices appeared to have performed statutory, oversight or monitoring functions.
The administration says eliminating federal bureaucracy does not mean eliminating required education funding and has said programs such as aid for low-income schools and students with disabilities will continue. Trump has also pushed government policy toward greater school choice, directing the Education Department to examine how federal formula funding and discretionary grants can support alternatives to traditional public schools.
North Carolina has pursued a similar expansion of school choice through its Opportunity Scholarship program, which uses taxpayer money to help families pay private-school tuition.
Lawmakers removed income eligibility limits and expanded access to students already attending private schools. State records show 80,472 Opportunity Scholarships worth more than $432 million were awarded in the 2024-25 fiscal year, up from 32,549 scholarships worth about $185.6 million the year before.
The General Assembly also increased the appropriation for the Opportunity Scholarship reserve to $675 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Supporters argue the program gives parents more control over where their children are educated and allows public funding to follow students. Critics argue its rapid expansion commits hundreds of millions of dollars to private education while traditional public schools continue seeking additional money for teacher pay, special education, school meals, technology and other needs. Earlier this year, the State Board of Education sought a moratorium on new vouchers and asked that additional money instead be directed toward public schools.
North Carolina Association of Educators President Christina Cole, a graduate of Ashe County High School, said Ashe County and the rest of WNC have already demonstrated resilience through Helene and its long recovery.
Helene caused $60 billion in damage, but the state has received only a fraction of that.
Cole said those communities need more teachers, more resources and stronger recovery support, rather than relying on technology as a substitute for broader investment in public education.
“If the First Lady and her husband’s administration truly want to invest in our children’s future,” Cole told the Citizen Times Sept. 15, “they should start by putting more teachers in our schools, providing more resources for students and giving more support to the communities still recovering from Helene.”
Cory Vaillancourt is the Helene Recovery/Investigations Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Find him on X at @The_CoryV or on Signal, via email at cvaillancourt@citizentimes.com or at 912-508-5640.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Melania Trump touts STEM in Helene-scarred Ashe
