Education

It was a day of goodbyes at today's UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees meeting. Chancellor Holden Thorp and several trustees are leaving after a tumultuous tenure. 

Over the past few years, Trustees meetings have often been tense, uncomfortable, and even demoralizing for the members, as the leaders of UNC-Chapel Hill have dealt with scandals in athletics and academics. But with Thorp on his way out, Board chairman Wade Hargrove offered nothing but praise.

Charter schools have been around in North Carolina for about a decade and a half, and for most of that time, the relationship between charters and traditional public schools has alternated between frosty and hostile.

About 1,000 undergraduates and 600 graduate students received degrees at Wake Forest University's commencement exercises today.  The school's Class of 2013 includes 11 recipients of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship.  Those students will be taking on post-graduate work ranging from researching regenerative medicine in Sweden to teaching Vietnamese children. 

PBS journalist Gwen Ifill  delivered the commencement address and urged the graduates to keep several promises.

  County School Boards have long since been in charge of school construction. However, the Senate recently passed a bill that would hand over school construction to county commissioners in 10 North Carolina counties. Many people who oppose the bill argue that county commissioners may have experience building prisons but not schools. This is one bill out of many that have been progressing through the Senate recently.