Carolina Journal News Reports | 2008 Archive

RALEIGH — Carlene Sumner moved to Wake County from Utah in 2007 with high hopes for her sons’ educational prospects. Sumner had trouble with enrollment in the neighborhood public school, and she missed charter school deadlines. An offhand, but fortuitous, conversation with another parent finally led Sumner to Thales Academy.

CHARLOTTE — Proponents of charter school expansion are feeling less than hopeful about Governor-elect Beverly Perdue. The lieutenant governor has been outspoken about her hesitancy to remove or change the cap of 100 charter schools in the state, and there’s little evidence that her opposition will change when she takes office in January.

RALEIGH — Two different visions of how to deal with college athletics were on display at a recent Pope Center round-table conference. Most of the 12 participants agreed that the world of college sports is troubled, but disagreed on the direction reform should take.

GREENSBORO — Piedmont Triad International Airport officials recently told Guilford County officials that while 2008 was one of the airport’s most challenging years, hopes were high over the “magnetic effect” the new FedEx hub would have once it opens next year.

RALEIGH — When Beverly Perdue replaces Gov. Mike Easley on Jan. 10 she will inherit serious problems with North Carolina’s probation, mental health, and transportation systems, as well as a major budget shortfall.

RALEIGH — At Woods Charter School in Chapel Hill, educators emphasize “academics and the life of the mind,” according to Principal Harrell Rentz. Such intellectual pursuit has an equally potent, if less tangible, partner: school cohesion, shored up by a strong emphasis on community, and a “high level of parental involvement,” Rentz says.

RALEIGH — American voters have elected a Democratic president who will work with larger Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate in 2009. John Gizzi, who has covered Washington politics for Human Events since 1979, recently discussed the likely political and policy implications with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio.

RALEIGH — One of the goals of the Pope Center and the North Carolina History Project is to bring to campuses ideas and information that have been neglected. That happened in November when the organizations sponsored a lecture by University of Alabama history professor David Beito. He spoke at St. Augustine’s College, North Carolina Central, N.C. State, and Campbell University.

RALEIGH — Four major reforms are critical for North Carolina to get rid of forced annexation, according to a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight report. The changes would help fix a “fundamentally flawed” annexation law.

CHARLOTTE — In December, a specially appointed Joint Legislative Commission on Municipal Annexation began conducting hearings about possible changes to North Carolina’s annexation laws. While the Assembly has resisted reforming annexation laws, state courts frequently hear cases of property owners fighting annexation. In October, the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling that had prohibited the village of Sugar Mountain from involuntarily annexing a number of properties.

RALEIGH — Two idyllic communities, situated in the heart of North Carolina, have come to fisticuffs over involuntary annexation in a dispute that might lead to a “Case of First Impression” in the U.S. Supreme Court.

RALEIGH — Decades have passed since debate about ownership of the Panama Canal generated headlines, but the heated canal debates of the 1970s continue to affect American politics today. That’s a key theme in the book Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right. Author Adam Clymer, former chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, discussed the book recently with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio.

RALEIGH — They’ve scotched the idea for now, but N.C. lawmakers might return later to a plan that would call on taxpayers to foot a larger share of the bill for running the North Carolina Zoo.

RALEIGH — One-third of teen-agers say they shoplifted in the past year, and eight in 10 teens claim to have lied to their parents about something significant at least once during the same period, according to a new report from the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics.

RALEIGH — A public housing authority may establish a for-profit subsidiary that is exempt from local property taxes, according to a ruling by the state’s second highest court.

RALEIGH — Guilford County Schools’ program of merit-based pay for teachers has increased test scores and graduation rates, but teachers’ unions call the model unfair and, instead, support across-the-board salary increases for school personnel.

RALEIGH — Regina Herzlinger, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, recently discussed consumer-driven health care during a John Locke Foundation Headliner luncheon in Raleigh. Money magazine has dubbed Herzlinger the “godmother” of consumer-driven care. She discussed health-care issues with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio.

RALEIGH — A digital culture saturated with blogs, text messaging, and iPods is to blame for the stunted intellectual development of teenagers and college students, an Emory University English professor says. Mark Bauerlein, author of the book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), spoke Nov. 19 at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill.

RALEIGH — For Susie Johnson, a Youngsville resident and stay-at-home mother of four special-needs children, paying the bills each month is struggle enough. But watching her sons languish in the public schools was far worse. Some of Johnson’s burden was lessened when Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, a nonprofit school choice advocacy group, gave her a $2,500 scholarship. Now, she can send two of her boys to Friendship Christian School in Raleigh.

RALEIGH — North Carolina could face a "property insurance disaster" unless it takes steps soon to shore up its coastal Beach Plan, according to a new John Locke Foundation Policy Report. A committee studying the Beach Plan meets at 2 p.m. today.

GREENSBORO — Earning a high school diploma yields obvious rewards for an individual receiving it. Failure to graduate, however, saddles taxpayers with unwanted expenses, a study concludes.