Best Of Nc Teachers: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best of NC Teachers contest is and who runs it

Best of NC Teachers is a public-vote award program that honors teachers across North Carolina. The organizer is Horton & Mendez Injury Attorneys, a personal injury law firm, and the ballot lives on hortonmendez.com, a site the firm publishes itself, with no outside contest platform sitting between the voter and the form. The firm's attorneys, including Nicholas Mendez and Devlin Horton, run the practice, and the teacher contest sits under its community involvement work alongside the Bobby Mendez Traumatic Brain Injury Scholarship.

Within the awards world this is a best-of style ballot: a community votes for favorites rather than a jury deciding or an entry fee applying. Its audience is North Carolina residents who want to recognize a favorite local teacher, and the firm frames the whole state as the field, with nominations and votes coming from communities across North Carolina in the 2025 campaign.

The contest is one of several North Carolina programs of this shape. Others include Best of North Carolina and the Charlotte Magazine Best of the Best Awards, though those are run by different publishers.

The dated record: editions, the 2026 window and what is unpublished

The firm's ballot history shows three cycles: 2023, 2025 and 2026. The 2026 cycle is live now, and the firm's own announcement states that voting is officially open through September 14th, 2026. On its community involvement page the firm calls the program an annual tradition that is just getting started, and the 2026 announcement notes the return of the contest following the 2025 campaign.

The 2025 edition left one published figure: the firm reported an overwhelming response with more than 500 nominations and votes submitted from communities across the state. That is the only participation number the organizer has put out for this contest.

On the unpublished side, the firm has left the category list, the per-person vote limit and any eligibility rule off its contest page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The exact day the 2026 window opened is likewise not stated as a date, only the September 14 close.

Prize amounts for the 2026 edition appear on the firm's contest page: $2,000 for first place, $1,250 for second and $750 for third. Those figures belong to this program's own page and should be re-checked there each year, since the firm sets them per edition.

How a supporter votes in the 2026 Best of NC Teachers ballot

Casting a vote here means using the form on the page the firm controls. A supporter opens hortonmendez.com/best-of-nc-teachers/, finds the teacher they want to recognize, and submits a choice through that form. The firm's announcement describes the vote as open to community members voting for their favorite local teacher, which makes this a general-public ballot rather than a members-only or jury process.

Nothing on the page presents a purchase, an account creation step or an entry fee as part of voting. The firm addresses supporters directly and asks them, in its own contest language, to encourage family and friends to participate too. That makes personal sharing the outreach channel the organizer itself names.

Two mechanics are not stated on the page and should be read off the live form: whether the form allows repeat votes from the same person, and whether any verification step sits behind the submit button. The form is the authority on both, because the firm has not written those rules into the page text.

After the close on September 14, 2026, the firm announces the winning schools live on its Facebook page, so the result arrives through the firm's own channel rather than only on the ballot page itself.

How this ballot sits beside its North Carolina neighbours

North Carolina runs a busy best-of calendar, and this contest is unusual within it because a law firm, not a media outlet, is the publisher. Most of its neighbours are newspaper or magazine programs: the Daily Reflector Best Of Pitt County comes from a Greenville-area paper, the Fayetteville Community's Choice Awards from that city's publication, and the Charlotte Magazine Best of the Best Awards from a city magazine.

County-scoped programs also exist, including the Best of Chowan County and the Best of Haywood ballot. Those draw their boundaries from a single county, while the Horton & Mendez contest addresses teachers statewide and draws nominations from communities across North Carolina.

The subject matter is the other clear difference. The siblings are general readers-choice ballots covering businesses and services in a market, while this program honors one profession, teachers, and ties the award to the firm's community involvement rather than to an advertising calendar. That narrower focus is also why its category structure, if the ballot uses categories at all, is a question for the firm's own page rather than something a neighbouring program's rules can answer.

Strengthening support for a teacher on this ballot

Because this is a firm-run public vote, the practical levers are the ordinary ones of community outreach. The organizer's own instruction is to encourage family and friends to participate, so a supporter's first move is sharing the hortonmendez.com ballot link directly with people who know the teacher: parents from the school, former students, colleagues and local community groups. A personal ask with the link attached travels further than a bare post.

Timing matters in a window that closes on September 14, 2026. A push that starts early leaves room for reminders, while a single late appeal depends on everyone seeing it in time. Spreading asks across the window, and asking the same people again closer to the close, is how supporters of a nominee usually build a total.

What the organizer says about outside or purchased help for this contest is nowhere on its page, so a supporter weighing paid options should read the firm's own terms first and the general guidance at our votes guide before acting.