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RALEIGH — Gov. Bev Perdue attempted to establish exactly where the buck stops within the state’s public education bureaucracy Monday by naming the same person to two key jobs.

William “Bill” Harrison, Cumberland County’s schools superintendent, is Perdue’s choice to be both chairman of the State Board of Education and chief executive officer of North Carolina’s public schools, a new position.

In essence, Harrison will lead both the policy-making and day-to-day operations in the Department of Public Instruction.

“I believe the changes will end up providing more accountability in our schools and I believe what you’re seeing is the first movement toward a more consolidated system,” Perdue, a Democrat, said Monday afternoon. She made the announcement in Raleigh flanked by the state’s top educational leaders, including Harrison and UNC President Erskine Bowles.

Much like her earlier reorganization of the state Board of Transportation, Perdue will need the cooperation of other players to make this reshuffle in education happen. However, she was confident Monday the State Board of Education would go along.

“If I can’t deliver that, then I can’t deliver much of anything,” Perdue said.

The performance of the state’s public schools — and who is in charge of making them run better — has been a perennial issue in state government.

The state constitution and state law divide the responsibility into overlapping — and often conflicting — fiefdoms in both Raleigh and at the local government level.

“We still have the issue of what does our elected superintendent do,” said High Point Republican Rep. Laura Wiley, pointing out one of the questions still lingering after Perdue’s announcement.

The superintendent of public instruction, Democrat June Atkinson, is a statewide elected position, but it has been stripped of most real authority. In a report looking at problems with the state’s educational system soon to be officially delivered to the General Assembly, consultants with Evergreen Solutions called the superintendent “a figurehead.”

Perdue bristled at that.

“I don’t believe any statewide elected official is a figurehead and I resent that on behalf of June Atkinson and the voters of North Carolina,” Perdue said, noting that she had asked Atkinson to take on management of a blue ribbon commission and to continue her work as “an ambassador” for the schools.

However, in the same news conference, she said, “The governor of this great state ... is responsible for education in North Carolina,” adding, “the buck ultimately stops with me.”

And despite her rebuke of the report’s language, Perdue’s moves Monday actually track closely with its major recommendations to shuffle and rename the existing deck of educational players.

The CEO slot is remade from the old “deputy superintendent of public instruction” post, an appointed position that in reality held more authority than the elected superintendent.

A series of constitutional and legal changes would be needed to clear up the lines of authority — reworking or eliminating the post of state superintendent, for example —  something that Perdue said she was unwilling to wait for and left to others to pursue.

In another move, Perdue announced that Howard Lee, the outgoing State Board of Education chairman, will become executive director of the governor’s education Cabinet. The Cabinet is a policy-making and coordination group that was mostly dormant under Gov. Mike Easley.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com