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Mon: Seeing Pink
posted at 2009-01-26 23:57 | Last modified 2009-01-27 09:13
The Legislative Building was awash in pink today -- icy, bright, fuchsia, coral, an extended palette of tribute to Coach Kay Yow.
A good two-thirds of the women who work in the building wore the color. Most of the rest sported pink satin ribbons. I’ve never seen such a display of support and solidarity for anyone on Jones St., and the fact it wasn’t really planned (as far as I can tell) made it all the more poignant.
Yow’s viewing is Friday at 10am in Cary; the funeral is at 3. She’ll be buried Saturday in Gibsonville. More on arrangements here.
Update: In case you missed it, WUNC's Yasmeen Khan had a nice piece on Yow fans bringing flowers to the Bell Tower. Hear it here.
Schools Shakeup
Governor Perdue announced today she’s essentially restructuring the Dept. of Public Instruction under a single leader. And no, it’s not the one you voted for.
For years now, the Superintendent of Public Instruction has been largely divorced from day-to-day decisions at the DPI. The State Board of Education assumed most of the policy duties, while the operational duties have accrued little by little to the Deputy Superintendent, an appointed position.
Today, Perdue reconstituted the “Deputy” position as CEO, a much more accurate description of the job, and she named Cumberland County Superintendent Bill Harrison to fill it. But here’s the twist – Harrison will also become Chairman of the Board of Education.
For a long time, the Board and DPI have been separate, symbiotic entities with carefully demarcated territories. The Board makes policy, and the Deputy Superintendent carries it out in operational terms. Perdue says that demarcation isn’t just unnecessary, it’s counterproductive, and putting one person in charge of both would improve efficiency and accountability.
Listen Now!
The Board has to approve the change, but there’s no reason to expect it won’t. In fact, longtime Chair Howard Lee is resigning from the board to take on the directorship of Perdue’s resurrected Education Cabinet, a body enabled by statute but non-existent under recent administrations. Word late tonight is that Lee has also resigned from the Utilities Commission (the state’s cushiest appointment, bar none) to go to work for Perdue fulltime.
So where does that leave the role of the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction? Pretty much where it’s been – a “constitutionally mandated vestigial limb,” as Asheville’s Jordan Schrader quipped today. Back in May 2005, at the height of the recount battle between current Superintendent June Atkinson and her GOP foe Bill Fletcher, then-director of the NC Center for Voter Education Chris Heagarty told me the office has been steadily bleeding authority for the past thirty years.
Over the course of the Eighties and the Nineties, you’ve seen a lot of the powers that this office used to have taken away - taken away by the legislature, put with the state board of education, given to the governor. And they’ve really stripped this office of a lot of its power. So while it might have made sense to elect this office back in the 1868 constitution, when some this was created, now people should really take a look and see if we aren’t electing an office that maybe isn’t necessary.
At today’s presser, Perdue seemed determined to make sure Atkinson remained relevant, calling her the state’s leading “ambassador” for education, and bristling when a reporter asked whether Atkinson was just a figurehead.
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But pragmatically speaking, Perdue’s restructuring makes the superintendent more superfluous than ever. When the Board and the Department were led by different people, the Superintendent had a nominal role to play as a go-between. But with one person running both, there’s no space in the org chart for the Superintendent, even in a ceremonial sense. And do we really need to elect an Education Ambassador?
Perdue says she’s aware some legislators want to make the Superintendent an appointed position. But she says she decided to enact her own reorganization now because the state’s schools can’t afford to wait two years for voters to approve a constitutional amendment.
Superintendent June Atkinson was as gracious about the change as anyone could be, but she left plenty unsaid between the lines.
Listen Now!
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