Category Archives: North Carolina

So Many Bills, So Little Time

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The bill filing deadline is fast approaching for the NC Legislature so our representatives have kicked into high gear. Here's the House Calendar for Thursday, April 11, 2013. You'll see that bills 676 through 846 were filed and as you can imagine they cover a wide variety of topics. Here are a few:

676

Harrison,
Moffitt and Fisher (Primary Sponsors) – ELIMINATE DIETETICS/NUTRITION
BOARD.

683

B.
Brown, Moffitt, Ramsey and Shepard (Primary Sponsors) – COMMONSENSE
CONSUMPTION ACT.

684

Elmore
and Stevens (Primary Sponsors) – INCREASE DRIVEWAY SAFETY ON CURVY
ROADS.

692

Szoka,
Hanes, Dockham and Samuelson (Primary Sponsors) – AMEND PREDATORY
LENDING LAW.

704

Brody,
Steinburg and Fulghum (Primary Sponsors) – STUDY AND ENCOURAGE USE OF
TELEMEDICINE.

723

Malone,
Avila, Fulghum and Davis (Primary Sponsors) – LEGAL NOTICES/REQUIRE
INTERNET PUBLICATION.

733

Pittman,
Blackwell, Bryan and Speciale (Primary Sponsors) – COMMON CORE STANDARDS
STUDY.

735

Jones,
Jordan, Arp and Riddell (Primary Sponsors) – PROTECT RELIGIOUS STUDENT
GROUPS.

749

Lambeth
and Hanes (Primary Sponsors) – LOCAL SCHOOL FLEXIBILITY.

750

Lambeth,
Glazier and Hanes (Primary Sponsors) – CHARTER SCHOOL FLEXIBILITY/PILOT.

760

Brandon,
Hardister and B. Brown (Primary Sponsors) – SUMMER READING CAMPS.

771

R.
Brawley – INFORM PATIENT/DRUG COST LESS THAN INSURANCE COPAY.

781

Harrison
– INCREASE SMALL BREWERY LIMITS.

782

Starnes,
Luebke, Jordan and Holley (Primary Sponsors) – FORTIFIED MALT BEVERAGES
ACT.

808

Boles
and Alexander (Primary Sponsors) – MERGE CEMETERY COMMISSION/FUNERAL
SERVICE BOARD.

809

Boles,
Moffitt and Murry (Primary Sponsors) – GAME NIGHTS/NONPROFIT
FUNDRAISERS.

815

Luebke,
Harrison, Adams and C. Graham (Primary Sponsors) – BAN USE OF CREDIT
HISTORY IN HIRING/FIRING.

822

Blust,
Jones, Holloway and Jordan (Primary Sponsors) – THREE-FIFTHS VOTE TO
LEVY TAXES.

829

McGrady,
Bryan, Moffitt and L. Hall (Primary Sponsors) – SALE OF GROWLERS BY
CERTAIN ABC PERMITTEES.

Student Privacy Concerns Raised for Tech Project Tied to Guilford County Schools

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inBloom is a tech project funded largely by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation that is seeking to improve education through data.  One of the school districts participating in the project is Guilford County Schools.  The inBloom initiative was announced about two months ago by what was then called the Social Learning Collaborative. Now that inBloom has been out there a while it's starting to get some attention from parents and advocates, and they aren't real keen on what they're finding as it relates to their children's privacy. There's some noise being made by some folks in New York (more about that below), but so far it doesn't seem to be of concern to anyone in Guilford County. 

Before we get to the privacy issue let's look at what inBloom is trying to do. Here's what you find on the inBloom "Vision" page of its website:

inBloom is dedicated to bringing together the data, content and tools educators need to make personalized learning a reality for every student. To achieve this vision, inBloom:

  • Offers states and districts a secure technology infrastructure to integrate data, services and applications that work together to support personalized learning.
  • Partners with education technology companies, content providers and developers to support the creation of products compatible with this infrastructure.
  • Works with states and districts to help them use this infrastructure to support educators and students.

Seems like a worthy pursuit and they go on to stress on the same webpage that "We recognize the sensitivity of storing student data and place the utmost importance on the privacy and security of that data." They have a full page dedicated to their privacy commitment.

Well as mentioned above some folks in New York aren't satisfied with inBlooms assurances. From the Village Voice:

Parents and advocates opposed to the new initiative believe it will put sensitive student information at risk and allow companies to capitalize on data that parents never consented to release.

The New York State Education Department says that districts have been sharing this kind of information for nearly a decade, and that the new initiative simply enables that data to be shared in a safer, more efficient fashion…

Disciplinary records, attendance records, special-needs records, testing records, addresses, phones numbers, email-addresses and birth-dates are among some of the data that can be shared with the third-party vendors contracting with state and city districts.

Opponents of inBloom are outraged by the prospect of corporations profiting from student information that parents never consented to release…

NYSED has a different take.
 
"I'm not sure there's consent involved. This is regular student information that when parents register a child for school. They give up," Tom Dunn, spokesman for NYSED tells the Voice.  

New things are always scary, especially to parents. Most parents understand that to a degree their childrens' information is "public" as soon as they enter the school system, but they also are accustomed to getting those release forms from school that say it's okay to use their childrens' images from a school event on the website, or if a reporter is going to be at the school for an event the parents get a form asking for permission for their child's name to be used. Thus it is entirely reasonable for parents to be upset if they find out after the fact that their childrens' personal info is being used without them proactively giving their permission.

It's also reasonable for parents to be worried because there are private, third-party vendors involved. Given the raft of data breaches at credit card companies, banks, governmental agencies and other entities entrusted with our personal info you can understand how parents might feel their children are being made vulnerable by this kind of program.

Even if the goal of the program is noble, and the intent pure, it would behoove the participating school districts to aggressively inform the parents and public of what they're doing with the students' information even if they aren't required to by law. That would go a long way towards a successful implementation of the program, and quite frankly it might be critical to the success of the program. If parents don't buy in, or actively try to opt out on behalf of their children, then the program's doomed to failure anyway so the schools might as well get buy in from the get-go.

No Holding and No Folding

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In poker knowing when to hold or fold is a critical skill. In North Carolina the legislature has decided that some people can't be trusted with knowing whom to hold (that would be a reference to the ban on same-sex marriage) or when to fold (that would be a reference to a proposed law that would require a two year waiting period and compulsory counseling for any married couples pursuing a no-fault divorce). Combine that two year waiting period with loosened gun regs and you have yourself a recipe for some interesting situations don't you?

I’ll See Your Bible and Raise You a Torah

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There's a proposed bill in the NC senate (SB 138) that would allow local school boards to offer elective courses in Bible study at their high schools.  This would probably cause some consternation with folks who see this kind of thing as violating the separation of church and state, but quite honestly if it's an elective that seems to be a bit of a stretch. On the other hand it does seem to put the state in the position of favoring one religion over others since it doesn't include other religious texts like the Torah or the Koran.

If the intent of the course is not to indoctrinate students but to study how the the Bible has influenced society then it could be seen as a legitimate educational effort rather than an effort to indoctrinate non-religious or non-Christian students.  And if that's the case then why not write the bill so that school's could offer similar courses to study the Torah, the Koran or other religious texts that have obviously had a tremendous impact on our world? 

Perhaps it would be helpful to look at the text of the bill to see if we can discern the intent. Here it is:

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
2 AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR LOCAL BOARDS OF EDUCATION TO OFFER TO 
3 STUDENTS IN GRADES NINE THROUGH TWELVE AN ELECTIVE COURSE IN
4 BIBLE STUDY.
5 The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
6 SECTION 1. G.S. 115C-81 is amended by adding a new subsection to read:
7 "(g4) Bible Study Elective. – Local boards of education may offer to students in grades 
8 nine through 12 elective courses for credit on the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament), the New 
9 Testament, or a combination of the two subject matters. A student shall not be required to use a 
10 specific translation as the sole text of the Hebrew scriptures or New Testament and may use as 
11 the basic textbook a different translation of the Hebrew scriptures or New Testament approved 
12 by the local board of education or the principal of the student's school. A course offered by a 
13 local board of education in accordance with this subsection shall (i) follow federal and State 
14 law in maintaining religious neutrality and accommodating the diverse religious views, 
15 traditions, and perspectives of the students of the local school administrative unit and (ii) not 
16 endorse, favor or promote, or disfavor or show hostility toward any particular religion, 
17 nonreligious faith, or religious perspective. Courses may include the following instruction:
18 (1) Knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are 
19 prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including 
20 literature, art, music, mores, oratories, and public policies.
21 (2) Familiarity with the contents, history, style, structure, and societal influence 
22 of the Hebrew scriptures or the New Testament."
23 SECTION 2. This act is effective when it becomes law and applies beginning with 
24 the 2013-2014 school year.

At first blush it seems innocuous enough, but you still have to ask why other prominent religious texts aren't included.  By not including them it's easy to see how people would assume the underlying intent is to introduce Christianity to the public schools, and as mentioned before it definitely seems to put the state in the position of favoring one religion over another.

Let's end with a fun scenario game:

  1. Bill becomes law.
  2. School district decides to offer Bible elective at its high schools.
  3. Two-thirds of the way through the course a teacher, who's a Baptist, goes out on maternity leave and the replacement teacher is a Mormon.
  4. Parents of several students demand either a different teacher be assigned to the course or that their children be allowed to transfer out of the class without penalty. Their argument is that they don't want their children being fed "lies" by that "cultist."

Wouldn't it be fun to be a fly on the wall of the principal's office that day.
Related articles

Bill would create Bible study elective for high schools

What’s Your School Spending?

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The Triangle Business Journal has a nice slideshow that highlights how much each school in the NC university system spends per degree conferred in 2011-12. Here's a handy-dandy list, by school, of the amount spent per degree and the number of degrees conferred:

  1. UNC School of the Arts – $115,840 (300)
  2. UNC-Chapel Hill – $115,376 (7,630)
  3. Elizabeth City State – $114,652 (429)
  4. NC Central – $82,547 (1,521)
  5. NC A&T – $78,160 (1,665)
  6. UNC-Asheville – $66,898 (723)
  7. Winston-Salem State – $61,797 (1,472)
  8. UNC-Pembroke – $61,475 (1,119)
  9. East Carolina – $61,024 (6,009)
  10. NC State – $59,408 (8,347)
  11. Fayetteville State – $59,370 (1,151)
  12. UNC-Greensboro – $55,593 (3,977)
  13. UNC-Charlotte – $50,609 (5,294)
  14. Appalachian State – $45,630 (4,246)
  15. UNC-Wilmington – $44,854 (3,189)
  16. Western Carolina – $44,383 (2,375)

FYI, the system average was $66,540 per degree and the number of degrees conferred system-wide was 49,447.

Pretty Picture -or- Even a Stopped Watch is Right Twice a Day

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A friend was searching online for pics of our town and stumbled across a picture from my flickr feed. She emailed for permission to use it on our church's website, and when I looked at it I couldn't fathom how I could have produced it. Just goes to show that the right camera in the wrong hands occassionally produces results:

Bright Snow Trees, Lewisville NC, White Christmas 2010

Taken in Lewisville, NC on Christmas Day, 2010.

Battle of the Unpopulars

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Who do you hate more: your municipal government or your phone/cable/internet company? The answer to that question probably depends on which one failed you or which one's bill you most recently grumbled about paying, but after reading about a battle in the NC legislature over the ability of municipalities to provide high speed internet, you might be surprised at how you feel about your local government. From "The Empire Lobbies Back":

After a city in North Carolina built a Fiber-to-the-Home network competing with Time Warner Cable, the cable giant successfully lobbied to take that decision away from other cities.

The city of Wilson’s decision and resulting network was recently examined in a case study by Todd O’Boyle and Christopher Mitchell titled Carolina’s Connected Community: Wilson Gives Greenlight to Fast Internet. The new report picks up with Wilson’s legacy: an intense multiyear lobbying campaign by Time Warner Cable, AT&T, CenturyLink, and others to bar communities from building their own networks. The report examines how millions of dollars bought restrictions that encourage cable and DSL monopolies rather than new choices for residents and businesses…

Big cable and DSL companies try year after year to create barriers to community­‐owned networks. They only have to succeed once; because of their lobbying might, they have near limitless power to stop future bills that would restore local authority. North Carolina’s residents and businesses are now stuck with higher prices and less opportunity for economic development due to these limitations on local authority.

The report, which details industries efforts over the years that eventually resulted in the 2011 legislation that effectively banned municipal netorks, can be found here – and yes it's fairly biased, but still raises some really good points. One excerpt:

Far from providing a "level playing field" the Act has stifled public investment in community broadband networks and no one anticipates a local government building a network as long as it remains in effect. This reality should trouble all in North Carolina, as it cannot be globally, or even regionally, competitive simply by relying on last-generation connections from Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, or AT&T.

Cities near the border of North Carolina, including Danville, Virginia; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Bristol in both Tennessee and Virginia all offer gigabit services via municipal utilities. Chattanooga's minimum network spped of 50 Mbps both downstream and upstream dwarfs what is available from DSL or cable networks. Many east coast communities outside of the Carolinas have access to Verizon's fiber optic FiOS, which also dramatically outperforms cable and DSL services. Services from AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and CenturyLink cannot compare to the services offered on modern networks.

Sounds like we in the Carolinas are doomed to live in a digital backwater for the foreseeable future. Perhaps municipal networks aren't the answer, but in this era of intense competition between states/cities to recruit new businesses wouldn't it be nice if our municipalities had kick-butt networks in their economic development quivers? And if the private sector can't provide it do we really want our cities/towns hamstrung by the inability to provide it themselves?

Remember the Carolina Cougars?

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Folks of a certain age from around these parts (Piedmont Triad of North Carolina) might remember the Carolina Cougars of the old American Basketball Association. The Cougars were based in Greensboro until 1974 when they were purchased by Ozzie and Daniel Silna, moved to St. Louis and renamed the Spirit. That's when this story starts to get really interesting:

Four of the A.B.A.’s seven teams merged with the N.B.A. in 1976, but the Virginia Squires were a financial wreck and the Kentucky Colonels were placated with a $3.3 million payment. But if the Spirits couldn’t join the N.B.A., the Silna brothers wanted to share in what the A.B.A. didn’t have: national TV revenue. They settled with one-seventh of the television money generated annually by each of the four surviving A.B.A. teams — the Nets, the San Antonio Spurs, the Indiana Pacers and the Denver Nuggets…

In 1980-81, the first year the Silnas were eligible to get their share of TV money, they received $521,749, according to court documents filed by the N.B.A. For the 2010-11 season, they received $17,450,000. The N.B.A.’s latest TV deal, with ESPN and TNT, is worth $7.4 billion over eight years. Soon, the Silnas’ total take will hit $300 million.

That's what you might call a heckuva deal, but the brothers are looking to maximize it:

In Manhattan federal court on Thursday, lawyers for the Silna brothers and the league argued over whether the men are owed money beyond what they get from the N.B.A.’s national broadcast and cable television contracts. They want to tap into the money the league gets from international broadcasts, NBA TV, the league’s cable network, and other lucrative deals that could not have been imagined in the three network television universe of 1976.

If Federal District Judge Loretta A. Preska agrees, the Silna brothers — Ozzie, 79, and living in Malibu, Calif., and Daniel, 68, and living in Saddle River, N.J. — stand to receive millions more, all without having assembled a team or used an arena for more than three decades.

As the article pointed out the brothers' original investment in a struggling team in a struggling league was quite risky, but it's hard to imagine that they imagined it would pay off to this extent.

The Incredible Shrinking Middle

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One of the underexplored aspects of the current unemployment situation in North Carolina is the movement of people from adequate paying jobs to under paying jobs. A study by the NC Justice Center makes it vividly clear:

The nonprofit group determined there were 356,000 more working-age adults employed in the state in 2001 than in 2010, with manufacturing taking the brunt of the job decline.

The state lost 380,000 jobs in that period, with about 75 percent concentrated in industries with average hourly wages that enabled individuals and families to stay above the living income standard. A family of four needed to earn at least $23.47 an hour in 2010 to have enough money to meet basic expenses, according to N.C. state government standards.

The state's manufacturing workforce, which paid an average of $25.30 an hour, fell by 38 percent during the 10-year period. Manufacturing accounted for 72 percent of the state's job losses…

Where North Carolina did have job growth, it mostly came in low-wage industry sectors, the group said. About 83 percent of the job growth came with average wages of less than the $23.47-an-hour living income standard for a family of four.

For example, 15 percent of the state's job growth from 2001 to 2010 came in the food-services and accommodation sectors, which paid $7.15 an hour.

The state's median household income dropped 9.4 percent during the decade, or from $47,823 in 2001 to $43,326 in 2010.

The center found the number of North Carolinians living in poverty – $22,314 annual income for a family of four – rose by 24.1 percent during the decade.

In a nutshell the middle class is shrinking, and not from upward mobility. You would think that would lead to an outcry against the "corporate class," but outside of a little wrist-slapping at the height of the economic meltdown it just hasn't happened. That's what makes this interview of Mike Lofgren by Bill Moyers so easy to believe (h/t Fec for the link). For those of you expecting an anti-Republican screed you'll be disappointed – he basically argues that both parties have been captured by the corporate class. Enjoy:

Charlotte During DNC Sounds Like the Triad During Furniture Market

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In the months before moving with my family to Lewisville, NC in 2004 I decided to take a couple of road trips down from Washington to check out the business environment in the Piedmont Triad. I'd never had trouble getting a room before so I didn't think to make a reservation, which was a huge mistake the time I made the trip the same week that the Furniture Market was in full swing in High Point. Let's just say I ended up staying in a motel where I suspect I was the only person who didn't pay by the hour.

Apparently finding a room in Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention is a similar experience:

All these political reporters have been complaining about the boring staged political conventions for weeks, but when presented with the opportunity to talk to a real live victim of the "Obama economy" — a hooker — they run away screaming. The National Review's John Fund explains that one of their political reporters was forced to request a hotel change after the Democratic National Convention assigned the reporter to a seedy Charlotte hotel that might have had a hooker working in the parking lot. Fund quotes his colleague anonymously:

The Knights Inn was the worst hotel I have ever seen, and I’ve stayed in many bad motels in my life. Two guys were dealing drugs in the room next to me, and a prostitute was working out of the parking lot. And this was in the early afternoon. The room itself was dirty, full of other people’s stuff, etc.

I have never requested a hotel change in 3 years at NR. This was the first time I felt absolutely compelled.