Former Gov. Jim Hunt says we can take him off the list of potential education secretaries in Barack Obama's administration.

Hunt says he'll advise Obama on education, but he has no interest in going to Washington, reports Lynn Bonner.

Hunt's name has appeared on several lists of potential education secretaries, including in Time and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Hunt called Dome on his way back from a three-day stay in Seattle, where he attended a Gates Foundation meeting on education. Obama education advisors attended, including the leaders of Obama’s education advisory board.

"I just spent several days with the top Obama people," Hunt said. "Many encouraged me to do it. I told them I would not go to Washington."

Still, Hunt said he expects to work closely with the U.S. education department from his base in North Carolina.

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Former Gov. Jim Hunt will talk about national education policy for the new Obama administration when he accepts an education award this month.

N.C. State University's College of Education will give Hunt, the four-term governor who started Smart Start, its Friday Medal on Nov. 19, Lynn Bonner reports.

The medal, named for former UNC president William Friday and his wife Ida, is awarded each year to education innovators.

Hunt continued to be active in education after he left office in 2000.

He served on the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education assembled by President Bush's education secretary. He is chairman of the board and a founder of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a California-based think tank. He also serves as board chairman of the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy at UNC, which works on improving  K-12 education in the United States.

Is this a speech or a job interview? Discuss. 

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue is airing a new ad touting her record in office.

What it says: The ad shows images of Perdue from her early life and her political career. A narrator says, "Bev Perdue. Neither of her parents finished high school, yet she became a teacher and earned a Ph.D. She's spent a lifetime fighting for the middle class — Smart Start for our kids, cutting the sales tax on food, saving our military bases from closure. In these tough times, she'll lead the way — a higher minimum wage, property tax relief for seniors, creating the jobs of the future. Bev Perdue, a governor for us."

The background: Perdue taught in public schools in Georgia and Florida from 1970 to 1974. She received a doctorate in education administration in March 1976 from the University of Florida.

Gov. Jim Hunt and the legislature created Smart Start, a statewide pre-school program, in 1993 when Perdue was in her second term in the state Senate. That year, Hunt appointed her as one of 16 initial members of a board to oversee Smart Start.

Then-Gov. Terry Sanford helped establish a statewide sales tax on food in 1961 to pay higher teacher salaries. It was supposed to be temporary, but it lasted almost four decades. Lawmakers cut it from 4 percent to 3 percent in 1996 and eliminated it two years later.

Perdue was co-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee when lawmakers eliminated the tax. She voted in favor of doing so, but was not a champion of the cause. An unusual coalition of liberal lawmakers and anti-tax Republicans pushed for eliminating the tax, while the Senate’s leadership was less enthusiastic.

"I have long believed it is the wrong item to tax and there should be a total elimination," Perdue told The Charlotte Observer in August 1997. But, she added, "You have to look at fiscal responsibility. The priority, I believe, in addition to cutting the food tax, is to provide adequate funding for teachers and to clean up the environment."

Gov. Mike Easley appointed Perdue, as lieutenant governor, to lead the state's efforts to protect North Carolina’s military bases from closure by the U.S. Department of Defense. The multi-year process is designed to be insulated from political pressure, and it involved work from a large number of people, including the state's congressional delegation.

Perdue has called for increasing the minimum wage in North Carolina by one dollar to $8.25, from the minimum of $7.25 an hour set to take effect in July 2009.

She also says she favors expanding the state’s homestead exemption and freezing the property tax revaluations for seniors who make less than $50,000 and have lived in their homes for at least 20 years.

Is the ad accurate? Yes, though there is no way to quantify how much Perdue helped the state's military bases.

— David Ingram

Sen. Walter Dalton is seeking more than $277 million in state spending.

The Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor has sponsored nine bills and co-sponsored 18 bills seeking appropriations in the upcoming state budget. A longtime state senator, he is serving an advisory role on the budget in the short session.

Dalton is the primary sponsor on bills totaling $208 million: $135 million for grants for local water and sewer projects, $20 million for the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, $16 million for stem cell research, $14 million for the Cleveland Correctional Center, $10 million to provide services for the developmentally disabled, $5.8 million to help provide high-speed Internet access, $3 million for biotechnology training, $2.5 million for construction at historically black colleges and $2 million for small business entrepeneurship initiatives.

Among the larger appropriations bills he is cosponsoring: $44.7 million for Smart Start early childhood intiatives, $9.5 million for 4-H camps, $3 million for home foreclosure prevention, $3 million for loans for biotechnology start-ups, $1.6 million for a dropout prevention program in Durham and Vance counties, $1.4 million for water resource management and $1.25 million for biotechnology education.

He's also seeking a number of appropriations under $1 million: Teach for America, state GIS improvements, veterinary medicine teaching and research, a statewide infection control program, a literacy program, Kids Voting, a Teacher Cadet Program, an early chilhood initiative, a youth golfing program and a health information management study.

Previously: Sen. Kay Hagan seeks $48 million in state spending.

The House and the Senate gaveled in the short session just after noon.

Along with the state budget, they will consider bills that passed at least one chamber during the 2007 session as well as some new legislation, Dan Kane reports.

One bill was introduced in the House, to provide $660,624 for Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils serving Franklin, Granville, Person, and Vance counties.

Other bills filed on opening day included a $44.7 million request for the Smart Start child care program and legislation limiting ski resorts' liability for injuries that typically occur in skiing.

Lawmakers can also expect another visit from Appalachian State University's football team, which won its third straight NCAA Division I championship in December. Resolutions filed in both chambers would honor the team's accomplishments, which include beating football powerhouse the University of Michigan.

Ashley Thrift says it happens all the time.

The Winston-Salem attorney, who was mistakenly included on a list of female supporters of Hillary Clinton, says people frequently get confused by his name.

"It doesn't make a bit of difference to me," he told Dome. "I'm pleased to have my name associated with the Clinton campaign, although I don't necessarily have to have it on the list of women."

Thrift, 60, served on Bill Clinton's transition team in 1992 and as chief of staff and legal counsel for Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. As chairman of the N.C. Partnership for Children, he oversees the state's Smart Start program.

He says Ashley was a last name in his family "five or six generations ago," and then was the middle name of his father's favorite great uncle.

"I guess most Ashleys are women these days, but I do see one or two that are men," he said.

Mark Binker says the claims in Beverly Perdue's ad check out.

In an ad watch on the News & Record site, he writes that her claims to have helped keep military bases open, led the fight for Smart Start, raised teacher salaries and provided health insurance for 115,000 children are mostly fair:

The claim regarding military bases is fair, although it neglects to spread credit to other players, such as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a Republican. Perdue led the state's efforts to make sure the so-called BRAC process did not hurt North Carolina and has been visible on the issue. Making North Carolina "the most military-friendly state in the nation" has been a mantra of her time in office.

However, he says that Smart Start "was, is and forever will be" seen as the signature policy of former Gov. Jim Hunt, though Perdue played a role as chair of the Senate Education Committee.

The three Republican gubernatorial candidates gave varying responses to a question about education reform at a debate Saturday. 

Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr said the state should focus on early childhood education programs like More at Four, Smart Start and Bright Beginnings. He argued for expanding vocational education and teacher assistance programs and raising the cap on charter schools.

"We've got to be supportive of our teachers," he said. "They've got as tough a job as anybody in society today. They're the police officers, they're the social workers, they're the surrogate parents."

State Sen. Fred Smith said that the state needs to pay teachers well, expand vocational education, improve community colleges, raise the cap on charter schools and support home schooling. He said the state should also address the high dropout rate.

"As a businessman, I understand that when we're losing one third of our customers, we don't need to continue to do the same thing," he said. "We need to stop back and get a new strategic plan."

Salisbury attorney Bill Graham said the state needs to reduce spending on managerial staff, educate more teachers at state colleges and bring discipline back to the classroom. He said the state also needs to identify children at risk of dropping out at a younger age.

"As children go through the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, we're taking our eye off the ball," he said. "We've got to continue to shepherd those children from grade to grade."

John Edwards wants to make Smart Start national.

In a speech at a Des Moines middle school Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate unveiled an education reform plan that included a nationwide version of North Carolina's early childhood education program, the Boston Globe reports.

Edwards unveiled a similar initiative, called "Great Promise," during his 2004 campaign for president.

The new plan also calls for a partnership to pay teachers more to work in high-poverty schools, create a national teachers university to recruit and train teachers and overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act.

"I grew up in a small, rural town and my parents didn't have a lot of money," Edwards said in a statement. "But I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

When the House passed its $20 billion budget proposal last month, Gov. Mike Easley reportedly criticized them for not having a "laser-like" focus on education.

But he may wish they kept the blinders on when it comes to one of his signature education programs, the More at Four pre-kindergarten initiative, Dan Kane reports.

The House budget includes a provision that calls for a study commission of early childhood programs that would specifically look at the "feasibility and desireability" of consolidating More at Four with Smart Start, the child care initiative started by Easley's predecessor, Jim Hunt. Smart Start also seeks to better prepare children for school.

Rep. Rick Glazier, a Fayetteville Democrat and an education budget writer, said the study provision emerged during budget hearings as lawmakers talked about similarities among both programs.

It's unclear whether the House provision will stand once a state budget is passed. Senate budget writers did not include it in their proposal, which passed that chamber last week.

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