Now, he’s going after Governor Perdue and calling for her to dump her Department of Correction Secretary because the man failed to fill parole officer positions fast enough – the very kinds of jobs that Fetzer’s irresponsible budget and tax proposals would have undoubtedly endangered!

Gosh, the mainstream media is depleted and not paying very close attention, but at some point, you’d think that this business of just saying anything to score political points – no matter how outrageous or hypocritical – would have to catch up with the man.

The Wake Education Partership is a non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to a world class school system in Wake and receives significant support from local business.

Among the key findings of an assignment system based on students attending the nearest school:

* 43 elementary schools would be over capacity if all elementary schools went to a traditional calendar; Wilburn would be over 300% of capacity; Wake Forest, Brentwood, Vance and Olive Elementary Schools would be over 200% of capacity. Assuming a year-round calendar remains in place, 33 elementary schools would be over capacity.

* Under a traditional calendar, 10 middle and 6 high schools would be over capacity.

* Overcapacity schools would not only be confined to downtown. Mapping of the schools reveals these schools would appear in suburban locations where neighborhoods are dominated by ‘empty nesters’.

* Growth patterns, and land and construction costs will add problems in the future. The report concludes: “Given the amount of land needed and the spiraling costs for new schools, it may never be possible to assign all families in western Wake County to their closest schools.”

* Many schools would experience a profound shift in the composition of their student body. This would have clear geographic patterns, with the appearance of high poverty schools in central and eastern Wake County, and low poverty schools in western and northern Raleigh. Under a closest school assignment system:

- 32 elementary schools would have at least 50% of their students on a free or reduced lunch, i.e. from low-income or poor households. Currently there are 21. 10 elementary schools would have over 70% of their students on a free or reduced lunch – Powell, Fuller, Poe, Washington, Hunter, Brentwood, Bugg, Creech Road, Carver and Walnut Creek. There are currently no elementary schools with such a high concentration of students from low-income and poor households.

- 9 middle schools would have over 50% of the students on free or reduced lunch. Currently, there are four such schools. Three middle schools would have over 70% of students on free and reduced lunches – Carnage, Ligon and Moore.

- Two high schools would have more than 50% free and reduced lunch – Southeast Raleigh High and Enloe. Currently there are none.

- In moving towards this pattern of poor and wealthy schools, 10 elementary, 5 middle and 2 high schools would have at least a 20% greater share of their student population on free or reduced lunches. 4 elementary and 4 middle schools would have more than a 40% increase in the share of poor students.

Clearly the overcrowding caused by a closest school policy would cause severe budget problems due to new building costs alone and trigger a second round of re-assignments to nearest under capacity schools. What this would mean is that some elementary schools inside the Beltline that are under-capacity, for instance, would experience a large influx of free and reduced lunch students from over-capacity schools in the same area. This could result in the formation of 3 or 4 more elementary schools with more than 70% on free and reduced lunch.

The Wake Education Partnership report is sobering. If the current Wake school board think it is a good idea to isolate and crowd a high percentage of Wake’s poor children into a few schools, especially young children into high poverty elementary schools, then they are either ignorant of the scholarship on the effects of high poverty schools on the achievement of poor children in those schools, do not care about poor children, or both.

Given the thousands of student re-assignments a neighborhood school policy would prompt, the obvious immediate cost of these kinds of plans plus the long-term social and economic costs associated with high poverty schools, the Wake school board majority needs to seriously re-think its goals, strategies and tactics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

NC Sierra Club notes that the STOP TITAN movement is going national.

The Southern Environmental Law Center lists the top ten endangered places for 2010. H/T NC Conservation Network.

PPP says UNC and Duke fans don’t hate each other that much. Don’t tell that to Will Blythe.

Watauga Watch reports that Virginia Foxx finds Washington excruciating. Then maybe it’s time to retire.

Medicaid could consume more than 6 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2080, says the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

I’m guessing that 70 year projections sometimes miss the target by a percent or two.

Sand Hoke Early College High School in Raeford made the front page of the New York times this morning as an example of a successful early-college school that is set up to help at risk students by allowing them to get a high school diploma and two years of college credit for free.

The head of the North Carolina’s New Schools Project told the NYT that half of the state’s early-college high schools had zero dropouts last year. That’s in a state where 30 percent of ninth graders don’t graduate after four years.

This Monday and Tuesday, state leaders and policy experts gather in Raleigh to discuss how to grow tomorrow’s jobs through creativity.

Anita Brown-Graham, director of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI), discusses how this new “creative economy” may change North Carolina schools and economic development efforts.

For a preview of Brown-Graham’s interview with Chris Fitzsimon, click below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now the Republican Party has posted an anti-Medicare ad on its website. The piece was originally recorded by Ronald Reagan in 1961 to oppose the Democratic attempt to provide health insurance to seniors. At the time, seniors had the highest uninsured rates of any age group. Thanks to Medicare, seniors are now some of the best insured members of our society.

The Reagan ad was part of the American Medical Association’s Operation Coffee Cup campaign. Historically the AMA fought most efforts to expand health care to more Americans. It was a major departure from that history when the AMA endorsed the House health reform bill in Congress.

I guess the NC GOP wanted to give us a history lesson and remind us who is truly fighting for seniors in health reform.

Although our state’s hospitals are not rated overall, two did stand out as reporting zero central line infections — Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville and WakeMed Cary Hospital.

There were 105 hospitals with no central line infections out of the 926 hospitals analyzed by Consumer Reports.

Berger is miffed by the plan that 11th grade history will examine the US after 1877. TV tea-baggers posing as journalists have been similarly miffed.

State Superintendent, June Atkinson said Wednesday,

“Our goal is to give students more study of United States history and to teach it in a way that helps them remember what they have learned. Students will have United States history three times before high school, and in high school they will have at least two more courses. The events, people and dates that are so familiar to many of us will still be taught to students. That means everything from early exploration through the Civil War, the 20th century and today.”

Nevertheless Berger complains, “The proposed curriculum changes will shortchange our students and North Carolina’s future.” The statement is a head scratcher. It is tough to see how students are shortchanged by the proposed changes. American history will be taught in middle-school for the first time. A full-year will be taught in elementary school. Tenth graders will get the low-down on the Federalist Papers. This all sounds OK to me.

In 11th grade, students could get the opportunity to examine our modern history in some depth. Perhaps Senator Berger doesn’t understand the importance of the period after 1877. 1877-1914 was, for instance, the foundation period for the modern American economy. What can be learnt from the stock market bubble of the Roaring ’20s? Mmm, let’s see… What about the changes in US society and economy wrought by the Cold War? The Civil Rights era? Reaganomics? Call me modern, but I’d say that these are times that need more in-depth student attention.