Lisa Miller

A dozen Charlotte Mecklenburg libraries that saw their hours drastically reduced with budget cuts will add back an extra day.  The library’s smaller, community branches will be open five days a week with longer hours beginning April 1.  Those include Hickory Grove, Mountain Island, Sugar Creek and West Boulevard branches.  It will take 30 extra positions to staff the additional hours. 

Libraries Director David Singleton says it’s the right time to expand hours.  

North Carolina is getting ready for a new breed of charter school.  They’re virtual schools, where students do all or most of their work online.  The state board of education Thursday is set to approve new policies to guide these schools.  They include paying the schools less per student than a regular charter and capping the student to teacher ratio.

North Carolina has no online charter schools, but it’s had a lot of interest in opening one.  That’s got the state board of education wondering how to deal with schools that operate so differently from traditional schools. 

Kids are half-way through the school year and no doubt talk of end of year tests has already come up in class.  There are some big changes in store for students across the state.  For one, there will be a lot more end of year tests and they won’t just be multiple choice.  They’ll include essay questions.  It’s not just kids that’ll be tested.  It’ll be a test for teachers in more ways than one. WFAE’s Lisa Miller is in the studio to talk about these changes, including a flood of new tests. 

A state law that prohibits the North Carolina Association of Educators from deducting dues from member’s paychecks is illegal.  A judge made that ruling this week.  The group’s president Rodney Ellis says the law is unfair because it singles out the teacher’s organization. 

“We felt it was as a result of us taking a position of opposition of what was going to be, in our opinion, a budget that would not benefit the students and educators in North Carolina and our schools,” says Ellis. 

This week Governor Bev Perdue signed a pardon of innocence for the Wilmington 10.  That’s a group of nine black men and one white woman who were falsely convicted of fire-bombing a white-owned grocery store in a black neighborhood in Wilmington more than forty years ago.  Their trial gained national attention.  A few years after the trial, the prosecution’s key witnesses came forward and recanted their testimony. 

Governor Bev Perdue has signed a pardon of innocence for the Wilmington 10.  That’s a group of civil rights activists who were falsely convicted more than 40 years ago in the fire-bombing of a grocery store in Wilmington.  The case got world-wide attention. 

School leaders in the Charlotte area are taking a closer look at security procedures following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. 

At a press conference Monday afternoon, CMS Superintendent Heath Morrison said the shootings prompted the district to ask “tough questions.” For example, what would the response have been if the shooting happened in a CMS school? 

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, private and charter schools don’t have much of a history of working together.  But CMS Superintendent Heath Morrison wants that to change. 

A few weeks ago, Charlotte Catholic High School principal Jerry Healy got an invitation from CMS.  The district wanted to meet with private and charter schools to talk about ways to collaborate.  He was surprised.  

“The agendas don’t seem to really match and in the past we’ve probably been looked on as the adversary, the people that are pulling our kids away,” says Healy. 

Two North Carolina school districts have won a combined $50 million worth of federal Race to the Top grants.  Guilford County and Iredell-Statesville schools will use the money to add technology to classrooms. 

In the past, Race to the Top money has gone to states.  This is the first time individual districts got the chance to apply for the grants.  The U.S. Department of Education awarded grants to sixteen districts across the country with plans to customize student learning.  

The state advisory council which monitors charter schools has decided to give Kennedy Charter in south Charlotte another chance, despite the school’s low test scores.  That decision hinges on a plan to move the school to the campus of Johnson C. Smith University. 

Every few years, charter schools in North Carolina have to go before a group of charter school administrators, board members, and educators.  They have to make their case for why they should be allowed to continue to operate.