North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 03/13/1998

The poem It's Friday March 13th. Tonight on rambling problems at the Transportation Department in North Carolina. Well now wouldn't you. Hello everyone a pleasant Friday evening to you I'm glad you could join us for tonight's edition of North Carolina now one of the biggest issues affecting our state government today is the ongoing troubles at the Department of Transportation. Tonight Well welcome to the program transportation

secretary Norris Tolson to talk about his plan to restore the public's confidence in the d o t. Also tonight we'll explore a method of teaching that brings purpose to the subject matter. But up first tonight we focus on a technological advancement that's revolutionizing the television industry. How would you like to watch North Carolina now on a television set that's bigger and sharper than the one you have right now. And how would you like to have perfect reception all the time. Sounds impossible. Well actually the technology is already here and we're in for big changes. Reporter Kelly McHenry tells us what it all means for those of us who watch TV. This may look like a typical TV broadcast facility but in Raleigh there is something different going on. Nothing less than a revolution in television technology. High definition television is coming. Jim Goodman of Capital Broadcasting is helping to lead the country into high definition television capital's flagship station WRAL in Raleigh was granted the

nation's very first license to broadcast HDTV. But what is that. Well high definition TV is a completely new way to broadcast television. Even though TVs have improved in quality over the years the basic engineering hasn't changed a bit. But HDTV is totally different. It has nearly six times more information than our current sets can broadcast which means a dramatically clearer picture beautiful picture changing picture size aspect ratio much wider screen like 35 millimeter film. Great for sports great for movies and improved audio CD quality five channels CD quality audio but you're probably saying I can see that the HDTV set is bigger but it doesn't seem to look any better to me. The problem is it's impossible to really show you the difference during the story. The reason is that any camera we use to videotape HDTV Not to mention the sets you are

watching are the current kind. It's like trying to see a color picture on a black and white monitor but I can tell you that I have seen an HDTV set and compared to our current models the picture is so much clearer and more detail that you can hardly believe you're watching television. HD is not only sharper and clearer than standard TV but it's also digital meaning the signal is completely unaffected by the weather. No dusting no snow as long as you are in the coverage area for the station for the digital television signal you will receive what is essentially a perfect since July of 1996 WRAL has been airing test signals on channel 32. But don't bother trying to tune in. You have to have an HD set to pick up the signal. Those sets are now being developed but don't think you have to rush out and buy the first one. Changing over to this new system will be a slow process. We believe the broadcasters will continue to transmit both the standard and the digital television

signal for up to seven to 10 years before phasing out the standard television broadcast. During that time every TV station in the country including UN CTV will have to replace the old technology with a new HD system costing each facility millions of dollars. You and I will also have to buy a new set at an estimated cost of about $3000 although prices are expected to drop just as the price of the C RS and CD players did. Still many broadcast executives believe the very future of free television depends on HDTV. They say without it broadcasting will never survive the fierce competition from cable and satellite transmission which is grabbing much of free TV's audience over the years. This is great for the future of the long term future of the free of the air system tables and satellites are incredible. But we're the local. We had a local ball that the locals don't have the best technology and that makes me really excited about the future about this.

It's taken nearly 10 years and a lot of infighting to develop the HDTV system. In fact computer companies almost derailed the plan in 96 over how HD would integrate with computers which are also digital. But about a year ago warring parties ironed out their differences and the Federal Communications Commission approved an industry wide standard for the new technology. Experts say that was a crucial step in this coming HD revolution a revolution that's already well underway here in North Carolina. The federally mandated transition to digital TV will be enormously expensive. Today you and CTV took the first step in converting our statewide 11 transmitter network. The University of North Carolina Board of Governors approved our request to include approximately one million dollars in planning funds in the budget proposal that the board will submit to the General Assembly. Well still I had a conversation with transportation secretary Norris Tolson. But first

let's check in with Michel Louis to get caught up on the day's statewide news. Mitch thanks Marina. Good evening everyone. Topping our news the U.S. Senate approved a 214 billion dollar bill to upgrade the nation's highways and mass transit systems from North Carolina. The upgrade will mean an additional four point five billion dollars over the next six years. Much of the increase funding comes from a change in the federal funding formula that guarantees each state will get back at least 91 cents for each dollar paid in federal gas taxes. The state is currently getting back 81 cents per dollar. The bill must now clear the U.S. House which is considering its own transportation upgrade. Look at group has settled lawsuits with 14 more states over the cost of Medicaid claims for treating sick smokers. The Durham based tobacco manufacturer says that brings the number of deals with states attorneys general to 40 and accounts for more than 80 percent of the Medicaid claims against the company. The agreement also includes promises to ban outdoor and Internet advertising. The Legate group broke ranks with the rest of the industry last year

becoming the first to acknowledge that cigarettes are addictive and cause disease. A national organization that rates the quality of health maintenance organizations is planning an investigation of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. The national committee on quality assurance says they were not told about the $300000 fine that was levied after administrative problems were found at Blue Cross. The committee could revoke the top rating it gave Blue Cross last fall. Such accreditation is important to the businesses since many companies won't use an insurer without it. The committee says it will come to the Durham based offices of Blue Cross in the next two months to review the matter. The Winston-Salem Forsyth County Board of Education has passed a measure allowing random drug testing of students participating in extracurricular activities. The new policy will begin testing students next fall for alcohol marijuana cocaine and federal means and other drugs. Students who fail a first drug test will be barred from extracurricular activities for 30 days unless they participate in a drug treatment program. After a second offense

students will be barred from activities for the rest of the current semester and the following semester. The new policy will be re-evaluated next year. A coalition of Duplin County Farmers drew more than 500 supporters to a rally protesting a new county health rule that they say is an unconstitutional attack on the livestock industry. The group called farmers a defense fund signed up hundreds of plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging a health board rule adopted in January. The rule requires new and expanding livestock farms to apply for a permit and submit to a site inspection by the County health director. Organizers of the farmer's Defense Fund says it violates their constitutional right to due process and delegates too much authority to the health director. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather to preachers will warm up across the state for Saturday highs and most areas will be in the upper 50s to low 60s mostly to partly sunny skies should cover most of the state except for Boone which should see partly cloudy skies. In business news U.S. Airways is asking federal regulators to get involved in the airline's efforts to begin

direct flights between Charlotte and London. The company asked the Department of Transportation to cancel a British Airways New York to London flight if officials at Gatwick Airport in London continue to refuse to allocate takeoff and landing times for U.S. Airways. The airline said it did not see cancellation of British Airways Charlotte to London route so as to not penalize U.S. travelers in the Charlotte area. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. At the end of January he was saddled with an arduous task to fix the problems of the

beleaguered North Carolina Department of Transportation and do it in 45 days. Concerns over a conflict of interest regarding road construction projects around the DOJ plus an atmosphere of deal making favoritism and political patronage. Those 45 days have passed and now there's a new reorganization plan in place to reform the state's largest agency. And joining me now to talk about it is transportation secretary Norris Tolson secretary tolls and welcome back to the program. Thank you Maria. Great deal of your reorganization plan deals with making it more responsive to the public why. The governor said very clearly to me when he assigned me this department that what he wanted to do was open the processes up into the parliament so the public could get a clearer feel for what it is we're doing how we're doing it and give feedback to the public so they believe the things that we're doing do in fact meet their needs. That's what I learned in some meetings I had around the state as well in my first 45 days. People said to me clearly we want you to talk to us. We want we want to know that you heard what we said and that you're

doing something about it and that you'll give us some feedback. So everything we did in our initial opening and work on reorganization dealt with how do we get the processes up and make much more available to the public just by them. And one of the specific ways that you're doing that is extending the amount of time for public input in the road planning projects. Right. The transportation improvement plan had been an annual document and when I got in I started looking at it it became very apparent to me that one of the things we weren't doing is leaving enough time at the end of that process for the public to look at the planning that had gone on and then be able to interface with and give us their recommendations. So we've gone from a one year process to a two year process at the end of the first year we literally have about 10 months where we will go back out to the citizen with the preliminary plan and say Here it is let's have some structured discussion of what's in this plan how you feel about it and what changes we ought to make.

Well that caused a great deal of delay them in the construction of roads throughout the state. Now it's the transportation improvement plan is a seven year rolling forecast. And so what you're doing is always updating the out years and making certain that the upfront years or exactly what you want to do and that it's on schedule. Political favoritism is a big part of the problems that plague the Department of Transportation What are you doing to make sure that that is taken out of the process. Well part of the objective of making the processes more public is that the more sunshine as I call it you can put on the process then the more that citizens have input into what's happening how it happens when it happens and where it happens. And when that happens then and then the public clearly has an opportunity to say this is what I want you to do or it isn't what I want you to do and I don't find out about it after you start early and I ask for when it's too late. Now weren't there some cases where some some safety upgrades that the engineers deemed as being very necessary weren't being funded in favor of some other projects that

that politicians wanted to have done. There was there was an occurrence of some projects that came in that were being funded or at least planned to be fond funded out of some federal funding that we have available. We call it has or elimination money. And when I looked at those projects I found out that most of those projects that the public heard about were in fact being funded by state money safety money and they were safe to project. I ran that test. Those that want we took them out of the federal funding package and we put them back in our own processes and subjected them to the checks and balances systems that I've installed. If they don't make the checks and balances they won't be funded. Now you had said in your statement when you announced the reorganization plan that you found this to be a department that didn't have a lot of processes in place and that was one of the parts of this plan was to put those processes in place particularly in the funding of roads. Tell us about that.

What I've tried to do was to this is a big part of 14000 people all very very good people working very hard for the people in the state. And what I try to do was to instill some business principles in the running this very large business. It's a department with one point a 2.8 billion dollar budget 14000 employees scattered all over the state. So what we did was we install some practices and procedures and guidelines that anybody who wants to access that funding has essentially make application forward run it through a public process which says here's what I want to do. Here's the justification for what I've signed off on it. And then we ask our engineers to assess it. CAN WE DO IT standpoint. And then where there is a debate over whether the project ought to be done or not. We've set up committees public committees people who are not in the department some engineers may be on it but predominance of the committee membership are people outside of the department to take a look at it and say Does this need to be done or done. A big part of the reorganization plan was the restructuring of the highway division and

you have moved highway administrator Larry Goode out of the Dio team. Why did you do that. We restructured the entire department not just the highway division but but one of my objectives was to decentralize a power base along with not having a lot of policies and procedures in place. We had a lot of power concentrated in just a few hands. It seemed to me that it was more appropriate for the citizen from the citizens point of view to create a checks and balance system so I decentralized all that decision making. The highway administrator still exists. We've created a new division of planning that will bring in someone from outside a department to do overarching transportation planning. And we also move the financial piece of the decision on what to build wear out from one of the administrators job and put it into a new chief financial operator's job. The chief financial officer reports directly to me and will have responsibility for looking at the way we fund projects where the money is going to come from. What we're going to spend it all.

And of course paying the bills moving that individual though out of the department did that have anything to do with the FBI investigation. No it is what I try to decide and looking at the doctor good is working the best uses services do. Can I continue to have him there and decentralize the power that was difficult for me. So what what happened is that the folks at each tree came to me and said we need somebody with this kind of talent. We'd like to have Dr. Goode. I've got him on loan Palmer along to that operation to do research. He has a Ph.D. in civil engineering. He teaches a course a year to NC State as an adjunct professor of civil engineering. Plus he's got national contacts for us to be able to use in helping us do research around the things that we do in transportation planning. So we'll be able to use your strengths there. Secretary Paulson Unfortunately we're out of time for tonight but we'll have you back on Monday. THANK YOU operation. Thank you Secretary Paulson will join us again on Monday for another interview addressing some of his top priorities for the Department of Transportation the number one priority is safety. Another topic we'll discuss is highway maintenance.

When you were in school did you ever wonder why you were studying certain material and whether you'd ever have any reason to use it. Well some North Carolina teachers are using a teaching method which make sure that kids see the relevance of everything they learned. MORIAL takes us to Gopher County to see how it works. Guilford County probably isn't a place where you'd expect to find a revolution taking place. But that's exactly what's happening in the school system here. Right

it's a revolution in teaching and learning at Madison Elementary School in northeast Guilford County and the revolutionary approach is called the method. Today it challenges students to ask questions. Work together and communicate better. The goal is to create independent thinkers and problem solvers. Children as young as these kindergartners become active participants in their learning through discussions and hands on projects. Thank you very much like in the Paideia method. Each unit of study integrates the basic curriculum areas into one theme for example to learn about the elevation of North Carolina's mountains. These fourth graders use skills in math science reading writing and social studies to create three dimensional models with today and integrating all the subject matters. The thematic approach makes it relevant to their daily lives so they can understand why they're doing what they're doing and they're very interested. The

teachers are excited and the kids are excited and they're having a good time while they're learning and oftentimes they forget that they're alarming because they're having so much fun. What are they hiding here yet. They're right. What what. In the second grade class students are creating a map based on a story they have read. Working together as a group they're developing thinking skills that will help them in their daily lives. Input data classrooms teachers spend very little time lecturing. Instead they become coaches and facilitators as they guide the children to learn on their own through projects research and seminar discussions in today as students get to do so many interactive activities where they get to make products and projects they do a lot of research. They are totally involved the student is totally involved in the learning process. Studies have shown that when you actually do something or you teach it to someone else as we often do and

today you retain it more in understanding you have a true understanding for them. What you're learning another important part of the day is teaching students to give to their community. One of the projects we do here is we we study animals and then they actually have they do research. We make a book and we actually take the book on the animals to the Natural Science Center and it's on display there for people who come to visit the animals. They can take this book with them and all the children's research is in this book so that the kids can actually see where their work has a value in the community. Supporters of the program say that in addition to subject knowledge the approach also teaches children skills that will benefit them in college and careers but they think it will help them be successful in life because they're going to have problem solving skills. They're going to know how to get along with each other because they have worked in groups and they have learned to question. They have warned to come to

solutions and they also learn to resolve the conflicts they have out on the playground or in the classroom successfully. So we're also teaching human relations skills. You can just see their face in the glow in their eye when they've been successful when they've completed a project. When they found an answer on their own no one had to give them the answer they were able to find it and complete the project without any problems and it's something that they can show ownership. So the excitement is they are day in and day out and it just makes me happy to come to school that I can see the children that excited along with feelings of accomplishment and self-worth. The children have also achieved higher test scores. In fact students at the 31 per day as schools in Guilford County have done so well there are plans to implement this method in all of the counties 94 schools over the next three years. The teachers are happier because they unlock the key to many more students than they had before but just using the direct instruction methodologies the

students are happier because they're able to demonstrate their learning so achievement is up. Parent satisfaction teacher satisfaction is up. And that can't help but help. School district this goal to implement the method system wide is a first for North Carolina but it also places Guilford County schools on the path to making national education history. It's significant because Guilford County is unusual in that it's both a large school system and has a wide variety of schools. That means that if you think of what goes on here as a kind of glorious experiment once we have been successful here and we believe we will be so that it will be worth the investment for Guilford County parents then that sends a strong message to the rest of the country that what happens here can be replicated in urban areas like New York or East St. Louis or Miami and it can be replicated in rural areas like the Midwest. And while being a nationwide model is flattering educators that Madison Elementary

School are focused on fine tuning a method that is working very well for their students. We have seen constant growth and we do think this is the way about the future because it's effective and parents are happening and can. Parents and teachers are really enthusiastic about what they do and they're seeing all kinds of achievement in all areas for all children. Currently there are 70 Paideia schools in 14 states 31 of those are in Guilford County. Recently the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation gave the Guilford County school system one million dollars so that the teachers in every public school can be trained in the day a method. Well that wraps up North Carolina now for the week we hope you all have a wonderful weekend. And be sure to tune in to you and see TV throughout the weekend for festival 98. I'll be joining you on Sunday for festival. Then again on Monday for another edition of North Carolina now. I'll see you then. Good night everyone.