Raleigh cheat sheet: Who's proposing what?

Trying to keep up with three plans for teacher raises,  vouchers,  charter schools and other education issues before the General Assembly is enough to make anyone's head spin.  Bill Anderson of MeckEd pointed me toward a comparison sheet on the Senate, House and governor's plans prepared by Public Schools First NC.

The group has an agenda  --  it supports more money for traditional public schools and opposes shifting money to charters and private schools  --  but the reporting strikes me as factual and it's the best at-a-glance synopsis I've seen.  Things can change every time the legislature convenes,  so check in on the legislative updates page for fresh reports.

It's not as easy to read,  but here's the General Assembly's comparison  (it goes beyond the education items,  which are at the top).  Feel free to share links to updates from other groups.

Berger with protesters

Meanwhile,  last week's conversation between Moral Monday education protesters and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger didn't produce any lasting harmony.  Although no one was arrested then,  the state NAACP filed suit later that week to challenge the new rules governing protests in the Legislative Building.  They won an injunction from Superior Court Judge Carl Fox,  who said the rules against making noise and creating a disturbance are so vague they could get groups of visiting schoolchildren in trouble.  This week's protest,  which focused on labor issues,  was a noisier event that led to 20 arrests,  the (Raleigh) News & Observer reports.

Berger's office says the Republican majority is just trying to "liberalize and clarify archaic and confusing building rules" adopted by Democrats in decades past.

“For years we’ve heard feedback that the 30-year-old building rules implemented by previous Democrat leaders were confusing and restrictive,” the Rockingham Republican said in a press statement. “We responded to those concerns, and I am baffled why (state NAACP president William) Barber is now trying to turn back the progress we made in increasing building access and free speech.”

Berger had told the group that the Moral Monday agenda would cost up to $7 billion and require a corporate tax hike of 50 percent,  up from the current 6 percent.  This week the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement countered with an analysis by the progressive N.C. Policy Watch saying Berger's analysis contained  "false or exaggerated"  premises.  That analysis contends that the Moral Monday agenda is revenue neutral  --  that is,  it wouldn't require huge tax hikes -- and might even produce new income for the state.

Meanwhile, a Forbes article circulated by Berger's staff bumped up the rhetoric with a headline saying  "North Carolina Progressives Demand Billions in Higher Taxes, 80 Percent Corporate Tax"  (that's Berger's 50 percent estimate plus the federal corporate income tax,  the article says).

The Raleigh-based Civitas Institute boosted the cost estimate for the Moral Monday agenda to $10 billion  --  and promptly followed up with a fund-raising letter. "The Left wants to take your money  ... We, on the other hand, ask our friends to voluntarily support us so that we can help regain and preserve the freedoms that are our birthright,"  says the letter from institute President Francis De Luca.

Someone will ask why the Observer doesn't have reporters delving in to sort out these conflicting claims.  The answer:  It's all an exercise in rhetoric.  If the General Assembly were seriously considering this spending program,  it would be vital to know what it would cost and how it would be paid for.  But no one's really pushing this plan.  Work on the real budget proposals continues hot and heavy  --  and my colleagues covering the legislature are more than busy trying to keep up with that.

Let's end with some literal political theater:  "Moral Mondays, the Musical!" It's a production of Will Rice,  identified by WRAL as a left-leaning communications consultant.  It's set to  "Monday, Monday" and features some Daily Show-style interviews with protesters.

NAACP opposes CMS split

The Charlotte NAACP has come out against an effort launched last week to split Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools into three districts, calling it a racist ploy to separate urban and suburban schools (read the statement here).

A group of north and south suburban residents launched a petition drive last week, hoping to persuade state legislators to create three new school districts. Their proposed "central district" would encompass the territory inside the I-485 loop, which includes a swath of schools where most students are from African American or Hispanic low-income families.

"Public education is designed to uplift and to help all of our children not just a chosen few but all," the NAACP statement says. "Splitting up CMS will only guarantee one thing that is the poor will be more
neglected and more thoroughly disenfranchised."

As of Wednesday evening, the online petition had 235 signatures, with a goal of 10,000.
***
Update on the battle of the bells:  Vice Chair Mary McCray says she and Amelia Stinson-Wesley, the newly appointed District 6 representative, are trying to set up a meeting between CMS transportation staff and parents unhappy with late hours.  It's unclear, though, whether McCray is willing to ask interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh to revise the 2012-13 schedule of opening and dismissal times he announced recently.

Parents have been lobbying the board for a change, saying the later bell schedule introduced this year cut into time for homework, after-school activities and family togetherness.  Hattabaugh has said the later hours let buses make an extra run,  saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I don't understand all the intricacies that go along with the bell schedule and feeder areas,"  said McCray,  who was elected in November.  "My hope is we can come to some amicable agreement and a better understanding of why the district has done this."

Civil rights and the news from Raleigh

Update at 2:50 p.m.: Turns out the projections for Wake's teacher cuts come from a state report that lays out projections for all districts. Read that report here. I'm posting a story shortly, but quirks in our software make it easier to post a link from the blog than from a news item.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will hold a national education summit in Raleigh this weekend, with a focus on school resegregation. National President Benjamin Todd Jealous is scheduled to speak Friday evening, with a Saturday panel on "Reversing Resegregation."

This lands, of course, at an interesting time for our state. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is grappling with huge budget cuts, which drove a recent decision to close several schools in African-American neighborhoods in 2011. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights is still weighing how to respond to complaints -- the total was at seven as of yesterday evening -- that those closings and other student assignment changes are unfair to black and Hispanic students.

Wake County Schools, which just became a majority-minority school system, is going through turmoil as a new school board majority prepares to shift to a neighborhood-based assignment system, scrapping the longstanding system that used family income to promote school diversity. CMS crossed the less-than-half-white threshold many years ago (currently about one-third of students are white), and beat Raleigh to the punch on the shift to neighborhood schools.

It's always interesting to check the News & Observer's education page. Among the other highlights from up the road: The Wake school board is preparing to interview finalists for superintendent, and officials are projecting huge classroom hits based on the likelihood of state budget cuts for 2011.

And there's a fascinating piece about the turmoil ahead for North Carolina's largest district, a title Wake claimed from CMS a few years ago.