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During the recent trip that the Governor and I took to Asia, I visited with students at two middle schools in Tokyo. 

Akasaka Middle School is a public school with just 150 students in a downtown neighborhood. Hiroo Gakuen is a large combined private junior and senior high with a long history of hosting international students and visitors.

It’s easy to note the differences between Japanese and North Carolina schools. The classes were quite large with up to 40 students in some classrooms. At both the public and private schools, the students were neatly dressed in uniforms, including jackets and ties for many of the boys. There are no school buses in Tokyo so it’s common to see schoolchildren of all ages walking the streets of the city or riding on public transportation to and from school.

While the Japanese students seemed very serious and engaged, their curiosity and friendliness are just like what I experience whenever I visit a classroom here at home. At Hiroo Gakuen, I was asked to tell them about the typical day for a middle schooler in the United States. Fortunately, I knew in advance and was able to consult an expert source – my 12 year-old grandson – for the details. 

Very few of the students knew anything about North Carolina or even just where it was so I was able to include a brief geography lesson in my visit. Of course I let them know that if they learned anything that day I wanted it to be that North Carolina is the best state!

Trips like this are a way for us to work to link North Carolina with the rest of the world. While the primary goal was to further develop business opportunities with expanding economies abroad, it’s always important to remember that the human connections, such as making friends in a classroom 7,000 miles from home, have value also.

Congratulations to the Appalachian State University students whose work on a solar house was voted the "People's Choice" in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2011 Solar Decathlon.

I visited the students' Solar Homestead house in July. ASU is one of 20 competitors in the decathlon in which collegiate teams design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive.

During my summer visit, I saw the energy and enthusiasm from the ASU students that resonated with voters in the "People's Choice" award.

"The team’s passion and enthusiasm were contagious," said Terri Jones, Solar Decathlon Communications Contest official. "The People’s Choice Award is a popular vote, and I believe the Solar Homestead house and team appealed to people on many levels."

The ASU students also won second place in the Communications Contest and third place in the Architecture Contest.

The project was funded through private donations.

Help me congratulate our ASU team. We are proud of them.

You can help students from Appalachian State win for their work on a solar-powered house.

Students from Appalachian State are competing against 20 teams from around the world in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.

The competition challenges collegiate teams to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive. The team from ASU is in the running for the contest's "People's Choice" award and voting will continue until Sept. 28.

Gov. Perdue and First Gentleman Bob Eaves visited the school's project in Boone in July.

Funding for ASU’s entry in the Solar Decathlon has come entirely from private donations from corporate sponsors and individuals. 

We ask a lot of our state employees.

It's been three years since they've had so much as a cost-of-living adjustment. In this recession, they continue to work under the constant threat of layoffs. They don't get a lot of respect for the hard work they do.

And that's why it's great when we have an opportunity to recognize the kind of dedication and selflessness that many of our employees exhibit every day. Last month, State Trooper Skye Stone was doing his job when he pulled behind a stranded motorist on U.S. 64 in Martin County. 

As The News & Observer's Bruce Siceloff tells it, Bob Inge, 54, and his mother were stuck waiting for a relative to come with a tow truck for Inge's disabled SUV and camper. While they waited for the next couple hours, Stone took care of them. Inge explained it to the newspaper:

"He went to a store, purchased water on his own, brought my mama a quart of water back, brought me a quart of water back, and said he would check on us," Inge said. "And he came back two or three more times. When the wrecker got there, he stopped traffic so they could get the vehicle off the road."

Stone would not accept reimbursement for the water. And he later told Siceloff that he didn't think what he had done was a big deal. 

"It happens a lot more than people realize," he told the newspaper. "We really do help people."

And by the way, for anyone who thinks Stone should have been more worried about speeders: He still managed to write nine tickets during his shift that day.

By Betsy Kane, Senior Planner, Community Planning Division of the NC Department of Commerce

North Carolina’s downtowns are among the favorite places that Tarheels and visitors cherish in our state. A healthy, vibrant downtown promotes economic development as well as a community identity. Active downtowns create a more enjoyable place to live and do business.  

To help downtowns thrive, the Community Planning Division in the N.C. Department of Commerce is developing a new toolkit for “Downtown Zoning Repair.” The diagnostic tool will help Main Street communities align their zoning regulations to better support their economic goals for downtown.  

Sometimes zoning regulations can be at cross-purposes with downtown goals. In my work, I kept running into situations where a town had zoning regulations on the books that were more suited to a suburban setting. 

For example, some regulations prohibited the creation of housing in the upper floors of downtown commercial buildings. There’s a lot of demand for downtown lofts and apartments, even in smaller communities.  

I saw similar problems in multiple communities. So I began to think it would be helpful to catalog all the ways that zoning should be helping, not hindering, downtown goals, and refer to that list when we provide technical assistance to our communities.

Working with staff members in the Urban Development Division (North Carolina Main Street and Small Town Main Street programs) and other planners in the Community Planning Division, we created a diagnostic checklist that can be used to make sure towns are doing all they can to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers to downtown revitalization. 

In coming months, I’ll be working with Burnsville in the mountains, Waxhaw in the southern piedmont, and Goldsboro in the coastal plain as pilot communities. Their participation will help me refine and develop the advice we give to other towns that may use this toolkit in the future.

Downtown revitalization is a job-creator.  Downtown businesses are often family-owned, and they have strong local connections. When you create jobs in downtowns, they are ‘sticky’– they can’t be lured away, because they are so strongly linked to place. The money spent in downtown enterprises also re-circulates in the community at a higher rate, and this high multiplier effect tends to make the whole community more prosperous.

One of the features of ‘Zoning Repair’ for downtown is that it costs almost nothing, yet the upside can be huge.  In these budget times, we are always looking for ideas that have a good cost-benefit ratio.

Gov. Bev Perdue continues to fight for education despite the devastating cuts included in the Republican-backed budget.

“We must have a highly trained workforce for our state to be globally competitive, and that education begins in preschool classrooms and continues all the way through our community colleges and universities,” Gov. Perdue said. “They may have cut our pre-k programs and turned our education system backwards. But tomorrow, the citizens of North Carolina and I will resume the fight for what we believe in -- that education must be the one priority we never turn our backs on.”

When she vetoed the budget bill, Gov. Perdue said the budget would force local school systems to lay off educators. Since the General Assembly’s override of the budget veto, news headlines have confirmed this fear.

“To think that those cuts will not negatively impact our students, that’s not true,” Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon told the Gaston Gazette. “The cuts will hurt. There will be individuals in our school system who have jobs this year that will not have jobs next year.”

Other systems have begun delivering pink slips.

Cumberland County: 179 teacher assistant jobs, 130 teachers, nine assistant principals

New Hanover County: 191 jobs

Harnett County: 88 jobs (mostly teacher assistants)

Union County: 100 jobs

Robeson County: 235 jobs

Statewide: Eliminating funding for Governor's school shuts out 600 students

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County: Considering a plan to eliminate 221 jobs, including 118 teaching positions

Wake County: Teacher Assistants pay is slashed

Columbus County: Layoffs have started

Johnston County: 123 positions, including 73 teacher assistants

Beaufort County: 110 jobs lost

Lee County: 50 teacher jobs, dozens of teacher assistants

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools County: 460 jobs lost

Statewide: Gap between rich and poor schools growing

The General Assembly's budget is the "riskiest gamble ever perpetrated on the citizens of North Carolina," said Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Dr. Dale Ellis. "What's getting ready to happen should be a crime."

"5 Reasonable People": A Superintendent’s Response to the State Budget Crisis from Lindsay Whitley on Vimeo.

Members of Gov. Perdue's cabinet have been travelling the state as part of the 'Education Works' tour, which notes the direct link between education and economic prosperity for North Carolina. 

Here are some highlights:

Administration Secretary Moses Carey has visited students in Sanford and Halifax County. In Durham, he told students that proposed mass layoffs of educators would "turn back the clock" in North Carolina.

Correction Secretary Al Keller and Crime Control and Public Safety Secretary Reuben Young stressed the importance of education to students in Richmond County.

Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle visited students in Guilford County.

Gov. Perdue and her cabinet secretaries will spend the next seven days showing how “Education Works”

On the tour, Perdue and her cabinet will visit classrooms in public schools and community colleges around the state and talk to teachers, students and local leaders about the importance of education in our economic recovery.

The new focus follows the governor’s Jobs Tour of April, during which time she announced 4,700 new and retained jobs and a quarter billion dollars in new investment from businesses.

It also comes on the heels of a state budget from the House of Representatives that proposed the largest mass layoff of education personnel in state history.

“We celebrate our teachers because they are the men and women responsible for preparing our children in a competitive global economy – for ensuring that North Carolina’s workers remain competitive, sharp, innovative and smart,” said Gov. Perdue. “I’m travelling the state to keep fighting for our educators and our education system at every level. The foundation we build for our future is too important to abandon.”

On Friday, Gov. Perdue visited the Roberts Company, which announced an expansion at its Wintervile facility. At the company, she spoke to Pitt County Community College students who are learning to do the welding and other work Roberts needs to sell its products to the chemical, power, mining and paper industries around the globe. 

Gov. Perdue received the following email yesterday, just as the House was finishing up work on a budget proposal that threatens the largest layoff of educators in North Carolina history.

"Please find attached a letter from my daughter, Amelia...regarding your efforts to save public education. Amelia is 6 years old, and a 1st grader at Mary Scroggs Elementary School in Chapel Hill."

Needless to say, Gov. Perdue agrees with Amelia:

Gov. Perdue met with leaders Monday at the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce about ways to avoid the potential closing of the Oregon Inlet, the major route used by commercial and recreational fishing vessels.

Gov. Perdue received a briefing from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. She flew over the Inlet to see first-hand the dredging efforts currently in progress. Sand is piling up in the inlet faster than it can be dredged.

Gov. Perdue pledged Monday to find state money to fund additional dredging vessels if the federal government is unable or unwilling to pay for the additional efforts.

Keeping the inlet open means hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in economic impact for North Carolina. The commercial fishing fleet has already moved north to Virginia and transferred fishing quotas out of state. Delaying or closing the inlet for charter, recreational and private vessels would have an estimated impact of millions of dollars to the state.