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Legislation delaying a new grading system for North Carolina's public schools passed the state House with near-unanimous support Thursday, leading to a showdown with Senate Republican leaders, The N&O's Keung Hui reports.

The bill, H435, would delay until Aug. 1, 2014 the release of A through F letter grades for individual schools based on factors such as passing rates on exams and graduation rates. The grading system, which was introduced by Senate President Pro Temp Phil Berger as past of last year's budget, is set to start this year.

The House bill would also make it easier for schools to get higher grades than Berger's model. The House would let schools raise their letter grade if they're showing growth on exams even if their passing rates is low.

The House bill, which passed by a 105-4 vote, now goes to the Senate.

The Senate Education Committee will consider Wednesday Berger's bill, S361. It would, among other things, set out how the grading system would work and end tenure for teachers.

After all the recent controversy about whether Wake County elementary schools should have unarmed or armed security, a new state Senate bill could affect the situation.

The "Public School Protection" bill introduced Thursday would authorize school boards to designate people to the newly created position of school safety marshal. These people, who could be school employees, school volunteers, or people specially hired for the position, would be authorized to carry firearms on campus.

On Wednesday, the General Assembly returns to Raleigh to begin the long session, which is expected to last about five months. In today's paper we take a comprehensive look at the people and the issues that will be making the news, and the laws, in the months ahead. From lawmakers to lobbyists -- and lawmakers turned lobbyists -- plus key staffers behind the scenes, and an army of competing interests, the statehouse on Jones Street is about to begin whistling like a kettle.

Dome meant to note this earlier, but it’s been a busy year: One local liberal group, Progress N.C., put out a report some months ago on the American Legislative Exchange Council that will likely have some bearing on the upcoming session.

ALEC was a significant part of Republican lawmakers’ agenda in Raleigh, with a “boot camp” on “model legislation,” a spring summit meeting of the organization’s various task forces – each specializes in specific issues – was held in Charlotte, and in the summer of 2011, a large contingent of Republican members of the House attended the national conference in New Orleans, where House Speaker Thom Tillis was named one of the legislators of the year.

Meanwhile, a drumbeat by liberal groups outed ALEC’s behind-the-scenes work to bring the corporate agenda to the nation’s legislators to pass pro-business laws. Despite the bad P.R., North Carolina legislators aren’t likely to severe their longstanding ties to ALEC, and the group will likely continue to be a player in the new session that begins in January.

A contingent of Democratic lawmakers and education officials held a news conference at the Legislative Building on Wednesday to decry a proposal to give corporations a tax break for contributing money to low-income students to move from public to private schools.

Rep. Rick Glazier, a Democrat from Fayetteville, said Democrats in the House and Senate “will do everything conceivable to fight this bill.” He said it was part of a larger conservative agenda to push private schools that would lead to the “destruction of public education as we know it in North Carolina.”

William Harrison, chairman of the state Board of Education, said the tax-credit bill puts “private interests above the common good” and funnels state money into private enterprise. He said it was part of a progression of legislation that in a few years would lead to offering private school vouchers to everyone.

“We’ve slipped a major policy issue into a budget bill,” Harrison said. “That seems to be the method of doing things in Raleigh these days.”

Speaking of the governor's tax-increase proposal, her office today released a letter signed by 53 North Carolina mayors supporting the idea.

Notably missing are the mayors of Raleigh and Charlotte. Predictably included are the mayors of Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Durham. But the mayors represent cities big and small from one end of the state to the other.

They're pinning their support on the education angle, saying the budget the Republican-controlled legislature passed last year was harmful to education because of the large number of teacher layoffs it prompted. More cuts are expected in the second half of the budget yet this year.

Perdue has proposed a three-quarters of a penny sales tax increase. The Democratic-controlled General Assembly enacted a temporary 1-cent sales tax hike in 2009, which expired last year. Perdue unsuccessfully fought to retain three-fourths of that penny in the budget.

A brief bill that sailed through the General Assembly this year without much attention looks a little more significant in the wake of the child-molesting scandal at Penn State, where officials are accused of failing to report the suspected crimes to law enforcement authorities.

SB394, with only one vote in opposition and signed into law by the governor in June, decriminalized school principals' failure to report specific crimes, including sex offenses.

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House Speaker Joe Hackney said the legislative session that adjourned today will be remembered for protecting public education during a 20 percent drop in revenue.

"In the context of a severe recession, I feel like we have saved public education and its core mission," he said during a news conference after gaveling the House to a close after seven months. "We did it without pay cuts, without furloughs and, I think, fairly."

Lawmakers return in May for the "short session" held during election years.

He said lawmakers' essential task when the session opened in January was to get through the next two years of a rough economy.

Hackney said he does not expect the legislature to have to return for a special session if revenue numbers worsen, saying that Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, has shown she can manage the budget when revenues dip. He also voiced skepticism that a Senate proposal to overhaul the tax system would be ready for lawmakers to take up in the fall.

An oversight committee expressed concern Friday that the N.C. lottery's benefits to education could be overstated.

Members of the Lottery Oversight Committee said that, in at least some cases, state lawmakers and Gov. Mike Easley appear to have used lottery revenue only to replace education money that would have come from elsewhere.

"It appears that there is a substantial degree of supplanting and not 100 percent supplementing," said Myron Coulter, co-chair of the committee and a former chancellor of Western Carolina University.

Committee members pointed to two of the four programs that the lottery is supposed to help fund: the More at Four program for pre-kindergarteners and teacher salaries to reduce elementary-school class sizes. In both cases, they said they suspected that lottery revenue is supplanting money that the General Assembly would have found from elsewhere.

"It appears to be the consensus of the committee that that's not a good thing," said co-chair William Harrison, superintendent of the Cumberland County Schools.

The committee said it intends to study the issue further and consider recommendations for lawmakers.

UPDATE: Easley budget adviser Dan Gerlach argues there has been no supplanting of previous education funding.

In a response sent Friday to Dome, Gerlach said the proper measure should be overall pre-K-12 education spending, which has continued to go up since the lottery's passage. The oversight committee should not try to speculate on what might have happened to specific programs without the lottery, he said.