Republicans cite rampant mismanagement within the state’s current Medicaid system as the reason for opposing expansion. Democrats say that the failure to expand will hurt a number of citizens and keep many people from not receiving adequate health services.
Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, strongly supports health care expansion in North Carolina. WhichWayNC sat down with her to discuss the issue. Her comments have been edited for length.

WWNC: In your opinion, what are some of the consequences North Carolina will face due to a refusal to expand Medicaid throughout the state?

EK: We pay when people use the emergency room when they don’t need to. We pay when they have bad health outcomes from not having a healthy lifestyle. And we pay when they have no method of payment. Medicaid, of course, would be federal government money, partly. So all of those are the reasons why we should’ve expanded Medicaid.

WWNC: Do you see any negatives that could come as a result of expanding health care here in North Carolina?

EK: Well, I read a report from a fellow by the name of (Dr. Chris) Conover over at Duke, a very conservative fellow, but it’s not negative. It’s just he doesn’t come out with the same financial savings that would come with Medicaid expansion as the ones that I told you.

WWNC: Republicans cite mismanagement within our state’s current Medicaid system as the main reason why health care should not be expanded. Do you agree that Medicaid in North Carolina is mismanaged?

EK: I think that’s a broad overstatement. There have been some problems, and we are adjusting those. But why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

WWNC: In your opinion, what demographic of people will be most negatively affected by a failure to expand Medicaid?

EK: It would be the large number of people who are young adults and are not covered in any other way with health insurance. Right now, they have no health insurance. They are the people that show up at the emergency room for every little thing. And those are obviously the adults that do not qualify or are not eligible for Medicaid, which right now is very limited. Only poor children, pregnant women and some disabled and elderly are eligible.

WWNC: With North Carolina refusing to expand health care, the federal government will now step in. What exactly does the federal government plan on doing?

EK: The federal government is doing the insurance exchanges. We will continue with the same group of people being covered by Medicaid as is now. There will be no expansion. The federal government will provide the exchanges, which means once people are required in 2014 to get insurance, they will need to know what’s available that fits their circumstances. Instead of the state making that decision and having local people answer the phone calls to help answer people’s questions, the federal government will have people somewhere in Omaha, Nebraska answering the phones and answering questions.

WWNC: On a mental health level, how does North Carolina’s refusal to expand Medicaid affect those with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder?

EK: Most of these people should already be eligible for Medicaid. The ones who aren’t covered are the young adults. The elderly, children and most of the disabled are already covered.

Related Links:

• A Medicaid Model that Works
• New Medicaid plan meant to build on-not undo- gains in N.C. healthcare

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class.

Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, is one of the main sponsors of House Bill 184, a bill that proposed to disallow pink stripes and any other distinctive marks from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) driver’s licenses.

The bill did not become law, but the Division of Motor Vehicles decided that DACA recipients’ driver’s licenses will be no different than any other driver’s license of any citizen of the state.

WhichWayNC sat down with Glazier to discuss the future of immigration matters in the General Assembly. His responses have been edited for length.

WWNC: Is there an initiative in the General Assembly to ignore immigration matters in North Carolina?

RG: I think the Republican Party is split, as it is nationally. It is split in North Carolina over what to do about immigration. I think a few years ago they were uniform in their opposition to any comprehensive reform. I would say that still the majority in the Republican caucus appears to be opposed to creating more opportunity and more access for undocumented workers and their children in our state.

I think that we are not seeing the anti-immigration bills moving forward, which I think is a signal from leadership from both the House and Senate that they may not let those bills happen, whereas a couple years ago some of them did.

What I suspect is going to happen in North Carolina this session is a very neutral policy where the bad bills are not going to move forward, but neither are the good bills.

WWNC: How important are immigration matters to the Democratic Party?

RG: Extremely. A number of us have for a long time been in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. We have been in favor of North Carolina Dream Act. We have been in favor of trying to create a more welcoming, accessible, open and tolerant society in every way to remove barriers to immigrant population. I think Democrats have pursued policies in that regard, both legislative and then administratively.

I think the community college policy, and what has been for a long time, the university policy of creating spots for the children of undocumented immigrants who academically deserve those spots, has long been as a result of Democratic initiatives.

WWNC: North Carolina had an Office of Hispanic/Latino affairs. Now that it has been officially closed, how much impact would this have in immigration matters in the Assembly?

RG: I think it was a really bad decision that they decided to close it. I don’t think it would have a lot of impact in the Assembly. What I do think it would happen is that it would eliminate our communications capacity. It would eliminate a position that not only provided information out in the community, which I think was important, but also brought issues in the community back to legislators and broadened legislators’ cultural lenses.

We now don’t have that position to give us information. What the governor’s action does is to insulate the governmental processes from hearing issues that we can help with and things we can do. I think that sends a bad message. I think you have to have specific outreaches to large communities in the state. The states that are successful and truly bring everyone together have recognized that for a long time and have those special outreach capacities. To eliminate that in North Carolina, I think it was foolish.

WWNC: In case a federal immigration reform bill passes, how likely is the state of North Carolina to implement a federal government program about immigration matters?

RG: First, to the extent that they pass immigration reform, since immigration is a federal issue, a federal law would control everywhere and North Carolina doesn’t have a choice as of whether to follow or not in that sense. The federal law would need to be followed. It would certainly be my hope that the state would choose wherever possible to be participatory in creating more open access, full non-discriminatory rights, both in employment and education opportunities.

WWNC: Would you say that the vast majority of Democrats support immigration matters, while the vast majority of Republicans opposes it?

RG: Yes, we support pro-immigration issues. That is absolutely true. It’s a part of the genetic Democratic Party DNA in my view, to be doing things to make the state a more tolerant, a more open and a more economically prosperous state by including everybody that lives here. I think that commitment is continuing.

I think that there are some sad bills that have been introduced. For example, the bill that reversed the community college policy of admissions. Certainly, bills like the consular document bill that Representative Cleveland introduced are not helpful to unite our state and to incorporate every person that lives here in our state.

WWNC: In your opinion, is North Carolina a state where undocumented immigrants feel deprived? Are immigration policies in the state comparable to those in states like Arizona?

RG: I don’t know that anybody here can feel as bad as Arizona. I certainly think that if there is no federal reform and there is no state resolution on any of these issues, it leaves us in a position where a lot of people still feel at risk and uneasy about their life and their circumstances. I don’t think that benefits either individuals or society.

Related Story

N.C. Gov. McCrory eliminates Latino affairs office, raising community concerns

WWNC: What progress has our state made in education over the last 20 years, and what are the challenges that remain?

JH: People say what we should be focusing on is how much students are learning. How do they learn? They’re taught, and now they use technology, but you have to have good teachers. Good education won’t occur, students won’t learn without good teachers. So we ought to be doing all that we can to improve teaching, to have better teachers, to have good conditions in which they could teach, enough time to teach, the tools to use in teaching, including all the new technologies and things of that sort. Gov. [Jim] Holshouser was a strong supporter of improving teacher pay. I think we got up to 27th or 28th in the country when he was there, and so in 1996, I’d heard that we had slipped in teacher pay, and so I ran on a platform of raising teacher pay in North Carolina to the national average. I said teachers are the most important people in our society, they work harder, they’re the most important people we have, and we ought to pay them well, and they ought to do well. We want to have the best teachers we can have. So I would say putting in early childhood, Smart Start, along with our fine kindergarten program, improving teacher pay and the reward on more excellent teaching by national board certified teachers. All of those things indicate over, say, 20 years from 1990 to 2010 or so were periods of great, great progress for North Carolina, but I’m afraid we may now be slipping back.

WWNC: How do you think the programs that you fought so hard to implement have survived since you left office?

JH: Well, Smart Start has been cut by 20 percent — the funding. I hope it will not be cut anymore, and I hope they’ll start increasing the funding for it. Teacher pay has been held steady — held flat — while other states have been going up. By the way, these teachers can move from state to state, and they do. We have begun, now, one hopeful thing that I’m proud of, and I give the Republicans credit for, some of them, some Democrats is this whole idea of doing more to measure the performance of the teachers. By the way, they have cut back on the amount of testing, which I decry. Testing is measuring student learning. We need to do it. We ought to do it in a fair way. We ought to do it in an effective way, and you can have too many tests but they’ve cut out 10 or 12 major tests from the schools, which I think has been a real mistake. But I would have to say the big thing that distresses me is the failure to continue to pay teachers well and to encourage them and to, by public comments, support them. You know our leaders ought to be praising teachers, encouraging them to do better — yes — figuring ways to encourage that to help make that happen, but we don’t ever want to be criticizing teachers and coming across as being, you know, ugly to them or not appreciating their wonderful work, and I’m hearing too much — not enough praise and support for teachers from some of our leaders.

WWNC: There’s been a significant focus on transitioning to digital learning in schools. Do you think that it’s important to start including digital learning?

JH: Absolutely. I really do think it’s important. It’s critical. But it’s still — you still got to have good teachers, and they need to be digitally proficient, and they’ve got to have the facilities and the equipment and the technology. All that’s got to be paid for and put in place. But that’s a big, new development, and we’ve got places that are doing an excellent job – and that’s going to take big investments.  We want to make it as efficient as we can, but we have to invest in it. We have to invest more in it. You know I want to do all we can for health care and for other things, but education is the most important thing we do, and it should get full investment, whatever it takes to have excellent schools, excellent teaching and learning we should do. That’s the way, by the way, you bring about economic growth and job creation. It isn’t just by cutting taxes. Taxes need to be competitive, but you get ahead by having the brightest people, the most creative people, the most innovative people. So we need to find ways to measure how we’re doing in teaching and in education better. We need to focus on putting more funding into things that will give us the biggest return like better teaching — the best teaching — but we also have to understand that investing in teaching, focusing on teaching, encouraging the best folks to go into teaching and stay in teaching is one of the most important things for us to do. I want to take this opportunity to say that I appreciate and applaud Gov. [Pat] McCrory’s focus on technology. I don’t know all the details of it, but that’s important and he has focused on that and I encourage him to keep doing that, but also we need a whole lot more focus I think from everybody — legislature, all of us in the local level on improving teaching and paying teachers very well so we can get and keep the best.

WWNC: Earlier this year, Gov. McCrory sat down with you to discuss education. What advice did you give him?

JH: We discussed many things. We discussed early childhood, Smart Start. We discussed how he’s going to organize his administration. He’s looking for a very good education advisor, top senior education advisor, and we talked about technology. We didn’t go into a lot of specifics, but I just encouraged him to spend a lot of his efforts on that and do a lot of visiting schools and asking for the opinions of teachers and other educators about what we need to do. So it was just a very general discussion.

WWNC: Tell me about the leadership program at the General Assembly that you take part in.

JH: It’s called the Jim Holshouser Legislative Retreat on Education. We bring in the best leaders, people with knowledge, who have done the best job around the country in different areas of education and get them to tell us what they’re doing. For example, a couple of years ago a lot of people were concerned that children were not learning to read in their earliest years.  So when I was first elected governor, I put in a primary reading program that involved putting in a teacher assistant into every classroom grade one, two and three, and I think a lot of that has now been cut out unfortunately — mistake. But in any event, at this recent legislative event two years ago, we brought in from Georgia and Massachusetts, because we were learning – what we were hearing was a number of teachers did not know how to teach reading successfully. So we brought these people in who had put in programs to assure that teachers can teach reading successfully, and they focus on it and then they measure whether or not they can do it before they give them a teaching license.

WWNC: How do you plan to continue to support education in North Carolina, and what are your focus areas?

JH: I want to support the governor and the legislature and encourage them to keep their primary focus on education and to invest sufficient funds to do it. I want to, working with the Hunt Institute, to continue to put on the Holshouser legislative retreats and keep bringing the best information to the legislature and to the Hunt Institute. One of the things I’ve learned that has occurred more strongly to me in the last 10 or 15 years is that we haven’t focused enough on the principals. Good teachers won’t teach for bad principals. They may start, they may take that job when they graduate and they need a job. They take some job. You’ve got to have a job, but if that’s not a good principal. If that person isn’t knowledgeable, caring, sensitive, supportive, after a year, they go somewhere else. They get a better job. So poor, ineffective principals are a bad thing, and we need to make sure that all of our principals are well-trained, well-prepared, they have the right kind of leadership ability and they treat teachers – they hold teachers up and support them and help them in every way that we can, that they can. So, I’m going to keep working with that and helping education in every way that I can and never give up and never quit.

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class.

WhichWayNC sat down with Appropriations on Education Subcommittee Chairman, Rep. Craig D. Horn, R-Union, to discuss the future of charter schools in the state.

WWNC: Why is the public so frustrated with the current public school system and what are the top complaints?

CH: When I moved down here from Maryland, I came to be a grandfather. But, I looked around at the schools and at what the kids were learning and I knew we could do better. One of the biggest problems is that there was a considerable disconnect between what was being taught in the classrooms and the skills that employers wanted. Tied in to that is the lack of resources and staff development that schools need.

WWNC: Feeding off of that frustration, popular media has endorsed charter schools as the saving grace of education, with productions such as, “Waiting for Superman” and NBC News’s Education Nation. Are the media’s depictions accurate and can charter schools make good on their promise to revolutionize education?

CH: With Common Core (and North Carolina Essential Standards), better technology and new digital resources coming partly from Race to the Top, public schools have made strides and are continuing to grow. But, you know, charter schools have a lot of great things to offer and can be a great choice for some students and their families. They offer less testing, negotiable teacher pay, and far less reports to N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

WWNC: Should NC charter systems follow a similar system of framework as Georgia’s Fulton County Schools and should they follow a graduated system of implementation?

CH: I haven’t really looked at the Fulton County Charter System in depth, but charter schools for the most part try to cater to the specific needs of their community. So, I think people will be really open to the idea of them and the transition should be smooth. And whether they have a tiered system or not, charter schools will be held accountable. North Carolina is not a home rule state, so we can stick our nose in to any business we like to make sure students are getting a great education.

WWNC: Many special interest groups, such as the N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE) and National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), have expressed frustration with charter schools and their lack of support for special needs, English language learners, homeless students, and other groups that receive school services. How should the state provide extra resources to charter schools in order to ensure the well-being of all students?

CH: Show me an example of an open and functioning charter school that operates under these practices. You can’t. Many of these schools are set up to deal with kids who need special services and if a school takes public money, it can’t discriminate. It’s that simple.

WWNC: Concerned about the ideology and practicality of charter schools, JoAnn Bartoletti, executive director of NASSP said, “When we throw charter schools at every educational problem, we end up with lots of wasted effort, minimal large scale improvement, and a public education system devoid of the public.” How can legislators address these concerns?

CH: Charter schools aren’t there to skim the cream off of the top. Look at Union Academy for example. It helps a mix of rich and poor, black and white, and urban and suburban kids. Also, the charter school, started in Charlotte by the former mayor, was designed to help the low-income inner city population.

WWNC: Judith Rizzo, executive director and CEO of the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy said, “Good charter schools were a great thing.” How can the General Assembly mold policy and ensure the excellence of charter schools in NC?

CH: Charter Schools are like learning laboratories. In a smaller, less regulated setting, we can try out new methods and systems of operation. As legislators, we need to give them the flexibility they need to develop and create. We also need to give them the resources to share their findings with the rest of the schools in the state.

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class.

WhichWayNC spoke with Goolsby about the problems he sees with the Racial Justice Act and his views on the death penalty. His responses have been edited for length.

WWNC: What was the original purpose of the Racial Justice Act, and does it actually accomplish what it was meant to?

TG: Ninety percent of the people I talk to don’t understand this: RJA does not deal with whether or not someone is guilty of first-degree murder. It’s whether they are going to get off death row and serve life in prison. These guys have already gone through their appeals and cases. This is about people who have already been put on death row because they are cold-blooded murderers.

Senator Thom Goolsby (Rep)
2 Terms in Senate
Represents New Hanover County, District 9
Email: Thom.Goolsby@ncleg.net
Phone: (910) 763-3339
Mailing Address: NC Senate
300 N. Salisbury Street, Room 406
Raleigh, NC 27603-5925
Voting History

WWNC: Who were the original advocates for this act in the legislature?

TG: I wasn’t here when it first got passed, so everything I know is just hearsay. I’ve heard there was a lot of wheeling and dealing happening here, but it’s all speculation.

WWNC: How many cases in North Carolina have been really affected by this act?

TG: Four cases have been reduced from death row to life in prison. All of them are terrible, but probably the one that draws the most questions is the murder of Roy Turner, who was a black Fayetteville police officer. His murderer was black. His case was overturned. We also had a white district attorney come to a hearing last week. He stood up and said, “I have been accused by the only three people I have put on death row of being a racist. The three men I put on death row are white. I gave these men that sentence because their crimes were horrific enough to warrant it. They appealed because I never put a black man on death row.”

WWNC: What makes you passionate about changing this act?

TG: I’m just an attorney, and I expect our laws to be carried out. People are skewing numbers in statistical studies to claim that district attorneys are making race-based decisions on who gets put on death row. I just think this was a bad law that was put in place originally just to get around the death penalty, and it’s been effective in doing that.

WWNC: How do you feel about this death penalty in general?

TG: The death penalty is just the law of our land, and if it’s the law, then it should be enforced. I’m not even that big on the death penalty. I’m sort of ambivalent on it.

WWNC: Has anyone approached you to repeal the death penalty altogether?

TG: If people don’t want it, they can petition us and change that. I have never been petitioned for it yet. I have not had constituents call. I’m happy to listen, but I have not had anyone come around asking about changing it.

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class.

The voter ID bill, which passed in 2011 but was vetoed by former Gov. Bev Purdue, would require voters to show photo ID at the polls. Proponents say an ID requirement, which has already been adopted in 11 states as of November 2012, would protect the integrity of the polls and prevent voter fraud.

The bill is backed by members of the Republican Party, which holds the majority in both chambers of the General Assembly and already has the approval of Gov. Pat McCrory, who views the bill as a necessary precaution.

McCrory told WRAL.com, “If we require an ID to get Sudafed … then I think an ID is good enough for the voting box in North Carolina.”

However, some North Carolina Democrats have a very different view of the bill.

“I think that’s wrong,” Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham said in a telephone interview. “I think we should encourage people to be involved in their democracy, not place limits.”

Cotham, along with other Democratic legislators, said that the proposed voter ID bill would limit the number of people who can vote. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Democracy North Carolina oppose the bill for similar reasons.

“We are adamantly opposed to any photo ID requirement or any identification requirement that might hinder people’s access to polls,” said Adam Sotak, organizing director for Democracy North Carolina.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections issued a report that said about one of every 10 voters lacks a form of state-issued photo ID. This means that if a photo voter ID law were enacted, these people would be unable to vote.

“I hope part of the discussion includes that this type of law would disenfranchise voters,” Cotham said,  “especially older people and older women who have never driven in their lives.”

In addition to requiring photo identification, the voter ID bill in 2011 intended to make candidates liable for campaign finance violations and create flexibility for voters applying for and using voter absentee ballots.

Republicans could have a huge impact on the voter ID bills that are presented in the upcoming session of the General Assembly because they outnumber Democrats in both the North Carolina House of Representatives and the Senate.

“There are just a tremendous amount of Republicans,” Cotham said.  “Many of them campaigned on this bill and made it a national agenda.”

Sotak agrees that the number of Republicans in the state might help the bill’s passage, but it doesn’t mean the opposition will back down.

“I think conservative leaders in Raleigh have a strong majority and will be able to fashion a bill that appeals to them,” Sotak said in a phone interview. “That doesn’t mean we’ll oppose it any less or stop educating people.”

Stotak explained why he is opposed to a voter ID bill in North Carolina.

“It’s a way to manipulate our elections for partisan gain,” Sotak said. “It’s nothing but negative, unfortunately.”

This story was reported for the JOMC 253: Reporting class.

Related stories:

• The Huffington Post: North Carolina voter ID law could impact 613,000 voters, report says
• The News & Observer: Voter ID bound to pass in legislature; will photo be required?

But when the North Carolina General Assembly convenes, public safety will be on the minds of many legislators and lobbyists. In the wake of last month’s school shooting in Connecticut, some states have re-evaluated their gun laws and public safety measures, and North Carolina will not be an exception.

Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, a nonprofit volunteer gun rights organization, has plans to present bills to the 2013 session.

“We’re in the process of drafting proposed legislation and recruiting sponsors and matching legislation to sponsors,” he said in a telephone interview. “We will be looking for legislation in the areas where people who have already proven themselves and seem sober and law-abiding are still prohibited from protecting themselves and their families.”

“And we will be looking for legislation to create a deterrent effect in educational properties where clearly the national problem has been demonstrated,” Valone added.

Valone predicts that gun-related proposals that have appeared on the national level will also appear in the state, including bills to ban automatic firearms. Grass Roots is hosting a Second Amendment Freedom Rally at the General Assembly on February 5 in response to calls for gun control legislation.

“We want to get hundreds of gun rights supporters to the General Assembly, contacting, visiting their legislators and attending the rally itself,” Valone said.

N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Chatham, Orange, says that multiple bills will come through the assembly regarding gun control and safety in public schools, including bills that didn’t make it in last year’s session.

“There will probably be a bill that is going to allow teachers to carry arms in school,” Kinnaird said.

The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, composed of every sheriff in all 100 North Carolina counties, will provide general law enforcement counsel to the state legislators.

Eddie Caldwell Jr., executive vice president and general counsel of the association, explained the role that the sheriffs play in the legislative process.

“We’ll have somebody at the legislature throughout the legislative session. Most of what we do is to provide technical assistance to the legislators and their staff on the bills they’re working on,” Caldwell said. “A lot of times they’ll have an idea that is not problematic for law enforcement, but the way the bill’s drafted, it will have some unintended consequences.”

“Very few General Assembly members have any law enforcement experience at all,” Caldwell said. “So we’ll help them with practicalities to rewrite the bill or make amendments to their bill that will still accomplish their objective, but do it in a way that can be managed by the law enforcement agencies across the state.”

Caldwell also reported that many gun safety issues for law enforcement officials were addressed in a previous bill, leaving no pressing issues. “A couple years ago, a long laundry list of issues was considered, some of them were left in the bill, some were taken out of the bill, and so I suspect that many of the issues that were on people’s minds were addressed in that bill,” Caldwell said.

Legislation about gun control isn’t the only concern for the state legislature. After the state crime lab’s staff was cut in 2011, the department faces a large backlog.

“The state crime lab is understaffed and underfunded, and that’s causing a backlog in their ability to analyze evidence,” Caldwell said. “The crime lab does most of the evidence for local law enforcement across the state both sheriffs’ offices and police departments.”

Caldwell explained that this backlog is pushing some counties to consider funding the state lab — something North Carolina has never done. But they might not have to if legislators are able to increase the budget of the crime lab.

“One of the things that I know the legislature has been asked to look at is the possibility of providing additional funding so that they can properly staff in order to respond to the needs of law enforcement agencies across the state,” Caldwell said.

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class.

Related Stories:

• WRAL: NC crime rate hits a 33-year low
• NBC17:Gun rights supports rally at General Assembly
  

Despite the state’s tight budget, constituents are looking for key changes to be made to the public school system. These include integrating innovative teaching styles into curriculums, improving teaching quality and adding more enrichment programs and charter schools.

The ultimate goals of the Board of Education include having 100 percent of students graduate from high school, ensuring high school provides students with necessary skills for success at the next level, producing globally competitive students and employees, keeping students healthy and responsible, and implementing innovative tactics to overcome challenges.

Martez Hill, executive director for the North Carolina State Board of Education, gives their objectives for the upcoming year. First, is the restoration of $370 million in discretionary reductions accumulated over the past few years for local school districts. The board proposes that the money be paid in increments over the next few years to make up for the previous cuts.

The board wants to expand students’ opportunities to use digital learning resources by integrating online assessments, class material and teacher-parent interaction into curriculums. Hill explained that a curriculum with more online classes and flexible learning opportunities would be budget-efficient, as virtual learning allows for fewer teachers. However, the costs of purchasing technology and teaching instructors how to use the technology would be large enough to require a significant appropriation.

Expansion of learning opportunities outside of school hours is among the top needs for education reform, Hill said. When comparing the North Carolina system with schools of higher ranks, including schools in foreign countries, the state lacks the continuation and stability seen in other schools systems. Expansion of these learning opportunities could help improve North Carolina schools.

The state would like to implement more programs held before and after school for tutoring and enrichment. Programs for summer learning and remediation have been proposed to help bridge the gap between each school year, which is especially necessary for students from low income families for whom academic stimulation is less accessible during the summer months, Hill said.

Charter Schools and Prekindergarten

Legislators will discuss an increase in the number of charter schools, an issue for which many parents in the state are pushing. Wake County could potentially add up to 14 more charter schools by 2014. Eddie Goodall, a former state senator who is now the executive director of the NC Charter Schools Association, said the association intends to establish more charter schools upon parent requests.

“Their child deserves a better education,” he said.

Education reformers also place importance on early childhood education. Constituents proposed to add a pre-kindergarten program to the current kindergarten through 12^th grade system. Hill would like to see the program placed back under the control of the Department of Public Instruction so that preschool is considered essential early childhood education rather than an optional day care facility.

Teacher Salaries

Raising pay for teachers will be discussed during the 2013 assembly: the Board hopes for a 5 percent pay increase for all teachers and for adjustments in teacher income based on teacher performance and school evaluations.

“Our goal is to recruit, retain, support and reward high quality teachers,” Hill said. Whether to emphasize teamwork throughout schools or to encourage individual teacher performance with rewards remains a question for the assembly to debate.

Hill said the biggest obstacles to achieving these goals are the weak economy, the lack of sufficient revenue, and the need to inform new legislators of the importance these education reforms hold in the grand scheme of North Carolina. Education lobbyists hope that legislators will give education reform precedence in the midst of competing issues like health care and tax reform.

North Carolina Association of Educators president Rodney Ellis wants to see legislators work collaboratively with the NCAE and other education organizations to implement vital reforms.

“With our experience, we could help make decisions that would positively impact the system,” he said.

This story was reported as an assignment for the JOMC 253 Reporting class. 

Related Stories:

• WhichWay NC: The importance of prekindergarten through Play-Doh
• WhichWay NC: Moving beyond money: Teachers find calling in NC
• WhichWay NC: Graphic about last year’s school and legislative budget

WhichWayNC created a quiz that will show you whether you’re red, blue or a varied shade of purple. Drag the statements you agree with into the gray bubble below. You can skip any questions.

It’s a cold, windy day on the beach in Nags Head, and Daryl Law is looking out over the ocean. He reaches up to hold down his hat, which is threatening to blow off. “You can tell the wind’s really blowing today,” he says to no one in particular. He points towards the sky. “The turbines are starting to furl.”

Law is the public relations coordinator at Jennette’s Pier, which was constructed in 1939 as the area’s first fishing pier. He’s standing under one of three 90-foot turbines that were installed on the pier in late 2010. He looks up at the hulking giants and says that on especially windy days, the turbines are capable of powering half of the pier’s facility. Today seems like one of those days, and a group of fishermen stop to mumble something about hoping they don’t blow off.

Law says he never thought much about wind energy before taking his job, but after noticing that the turbines cut the pier’s electricity bill by $6,000 in a year and a half, he’s looked into buying one for his own house. He’s started to travel to wind conferences and says he’s interested in the possibility of offshore wind. “It’d be new and different, and in the beginning, people will be upset by the turbines,” he says, struggling to be heard over the waves crashing into the pier. “But maybe if they put a few up out there, people would see they aren’t noisy or anything, and they could build a farm.”

He pauses for a minute to look out over the water again. “It’d be fine by me. I’d love it.”

Big potential

Law isn’t alone. Proponents of renewable energy have long called for installing turbines off the state’s coast because of North Carolina’s high potential. North Carolina has the largest offshore wind resource on the East Coast. If the coast were completely developed, offshore wind would be able to meet 130 percent of the state’s energy needs–of course, no one has suggested that much development. Because of the cheap labor available in the state, North Carolina also has the lowest estimated construction costs for offshore wind of any state and one of the largest electricity markets on the East Coast. All of this begs the question: Why haven’t any large offshore wind projects, the big ones that could feed electrons to a utility company, been built here?

Simply put, the answer is it’s just too expensive. By some estimates, the electricity produced by proposed wind farms would cost around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s nearly double the 9.9 cents per kilowatt hour that North Carolinians pay for electricity today. “The present costs are relatively high,” says Jeremy Firestone, a professor of Marine Policy and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware. “But,” he adds hastily, “that’s not unusual for a new technology.”

Firestone was part of a study at the University of Delaware that concluded the winds of the Middle Atlantic Bight, the aquatic region from Cape Cod, Mass., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., have the potential of generating 330 gigawatts of power—enough to support nine states from Massachusetts to North Carolina. He says the government will need to make investments in offshore wind energy attractive for states to be able to tap that potential “If we want to bring down the cost of offshore wind, then we’ve got to encourage its development through government policy.”

But offshore wind may lose crucial government support on December 31, when the Investment Tax Credit is set to expire. The Investment Tax Credit—also known as the ITC— is provided by the federal government and voted on by Congress. It offers manufacturers of offshore wind energy a credit equal to 30 percent of their project cost and is available for qualifying facilities that are “placed in service”—meaning they start producing energy—before the end of 2012.

The problem is, no such facilities exist.

Developers say that the high price of wind has made it difficult to negotiate contracts with utilities, which in turn makes it hard to secure investments. They are asking Congress to extend the credit for another year and change the language of the credit so that it applies to projects that start building their facilities before the end of 2013.

Brian O’Hara, the director of the North Carolina Offshore Wind Coalition, a nonprofit organization that advocates for wind development and regional collaboration along the East Coast, says the change in language is crucial because the planning cycle for an offshore wind farm is long—lasting from four to seven years—and thus it would be impossible for one to start producing energy in one year.

O’Hara has spent the last few years touting the benefits of wind to investors in North Carolina. He says that losing the credit would hurt investor confidence and slow the process of financing wind energy development. “The industry really needs some sort of long-term tax certainty to be able to effectively plan out these projects,” he says.

Impossible barrier

With the deadline quickly approaching, leaders of offshore wind energy development have scrambled to mobilize congressional support for the extension. Jim Lanard, the president of the Offshore Wind Development Coalition, which advocates for federal policies promoting the development of wind, has called the potential loss of the credit an “impossible barrier.” Lanard has come out in support of the “Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act’’ introduced by Senators Tom Carper (D-Del.), and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) in July.

The bill calls for a one-year extension of the deadline and includes the change of language so that the credit applies to projects that start construction by 2013. It’s part of a larger tax package called the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012 that was approved by the Senate Finance Committee in August.

Lanard says he expects the bill to pass through Congress later this year. “We’ve always said that we would need an extension of the Investment Tax Credit,” he says. “It’s inconceivable to me that it would be vetoed.”

But not everyone is buying in. Opponents of renewable energy argue that offshore wind has had enough time to become cost-competitive and that removing the credit would create a level playing field for energy. John Droz, a coastal resident from Morehead City who has traveled around the state to give anti-wind energy presentations, says he is strongly opposed to the extension. “Why should our federal tax dollars pay for this private business enterprise?” he asks. “What’s in it for the citizens?”

Droz says that wind is too expensive to succeed on its own and extending the subsidy is just draining tax dollars: “All of this time has gone by and they’re still singing the same tune: We need more money.”

Level playing field

Yet the fact is energy subsidies are nothing new. According to a study produced by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm that invests heavily in clean technology, the U.S. government’s history of offering incentives for energy sources dates back to 1789, when leaders of the new nation slapped a tariff on the sale of British coal.

“The U.S. has always provided financial assistance to new energy technologies and indeed provides financial assistance to old energy technologies, even to this day,” says Firestone, who was involved in a study through the University of Delaware that examined wind resources on the east coast.

He says that traditional energy sources have received larger and longer-lasting federal subsidies than renewable energy. These numbers are confirmed by the DBL study, which shows that while renewable energy received an average of $370 million in annual energy subsidies between 1994 and 2009, oil and gas received an average of $4.86 billion annually between 1918 and 2009.

O’Hara agreed with Firestone’s assessment, and added that, while current subsidies for wind may exceed those for nuclear, coal or gas, those numbers don’t take into account “indirect” subsidies, like “the public health effects of mining and burning coal [and] the military costs for our hyper-dependence on oil prices.”

The cost of these “indirect” subsidies was the subject of a recent study co-authored by eleven scientists, including Dr. Paul Epstein, the director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment. The study found the best estimate for the “true” cost of coal to be over $345 billion.

O’Hara says it is important to understand the cost of “indirect” subsidies so that people know what they are paying for. “On a per unit of energy basis, these ‘indirect’ subsidies are far larger than any of the subsidies for renewables.”

Uphill battle

So what does this mean for offshore wind?

In interviews, wind advocates said the prognosis looks good for the federal investment tax credit. Lanard says he believes there’s enough momentum behind wind to ensure that the credit is extended for another year.

But he says that this extension alone won’t be enough. Even with an extra year, it will be difficult to find developers willing to invest in billion-dollar offshore wind farms. Lanard says it’s likely that the wind industry will need to ask for another extension of the credit in 2013.

“There are many new start-up costs that will initially push the cost higher than traditional forms of energy,” Lanard says. He emphasizes that developers need to know they can make a profit by selling to utility companies before investing. “Before the end of 2013, the investment will only be made by companies that have a very high level of confidence that they have a revenue stream that would support the financing of their projects.”

He stops to list the developments that are on track to start construction before 2013: Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts, Deepwater Wind in Rhode Island and maybe a pilot project off Atlantic City, N.J. None are in North Carolina.

O’Hara agrees that a one-year extension of the credit won’t be enough to jump-start the industry, but says he’s not deterred by the slow start.

“This is a brand-new technology for the U.S.,” he says. “And when you’re talking about an investment that large, for something that big, in an industry that is historically a very conservative, risk-averse, slow-moving industry, it takes time to get things going.”

But with projects like Cape Wind and Deepwater Wind on the horizon, he thinks things are about to pick up.

“When you’re looking at a transition that we’re making as a society from fossil fuels to clean energy that’s driven by market conditions, there is a huge business opportunity in this,” he said. “And I hope North Carolina is one of the states that takes it.”