It’s not easy to get to Ocracoke from Raleigh.

It’s even harder to get from Ocracoke to Harvard.

But Katie Kinnion (photo) did it – thanks to North Carolina’s public schools.

I read about her during our two-hour-plus ferry ride from Swan Quarter across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke last week.

You have to take a ferry. There’s no bridge.

The Sea Level ferry, run by the N.C. Department of Transportation, has a comfortable passenger lounge. There were copies of the Ocracoke Observer, with a front-page story headlined “Ocracoke student attending Harvard.”

The story said Katie is a junior majoring in neuroscience there. She wants to go to law school.

She went to Ocracoke’s one public school, which has about 150 students and houses all grades. There were 13 students in her sophomore class.

Some 700 people live year-round on Ocracoke, clustered in the village at the southern end of the 16-mile-long island.

Most of the island is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, protected from development. In the fall, you can walk for miles on the wide beaches without seeing anyone. The water is still fine for swimming.

The seafood is fresh from the sound and ocean.

But the isolation can be hard on the people who live there – especially when storms roll in off the Atlantic.

And opportunities can be limited for young people.

For her junior and senior years, Katie went to the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham – which, she said in a nice tribute to my old boss – “is nationally ranked as one of the best academic high schools, started in 1980 by North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt.”

She’s a tribute to what our state’s public schools can do for young people.

The state ferry system does a good job of getting you where you want to go.

Republicans who control the General Assembly should pass a budget that helps more students get where they want to go.

As Governor Hunt once said, “The most important thing we do in America is teach our children.”

Photo by Kristen Potter/Ocracoke Observer