news-record.com

RALEIGH (AP) — Days after a judge ruled his role as top administrator of North Carolina's public schools was unconstitutional, Gov. Beverly Perdue's choice to unify the state education bureaucracy said Wednesday he will step down from his newly created post in August.

Bill Harrison said he will retire from his administrative post as chief executive officer of the public schools, but continue in his second role as State Board of Education chairman.

On Friday, a Wake County judge ruled the state constitution gives day-to-day administrative control to the elected state superintendent of public instruction. June Atkinson won her second term in the position last fall, but the state school board has never allowed her to run the public schools that educate more than 1.4 million children statewide.

"I want my focus to be on the 1.4 million students in this state, not on a court case," Harrison said in a statement. "Six months ago, Gov. Perdue asked me to help her transform North Carolina's public school system and I will continue to work with her and Superintendent Atkinson to do so."

Atkinson has been in Colorado this week attending a meeting of the national Council of Chief State School Officers.

Wake County Superior Judge Robert Hobgood ruled Friday that the state board of education violated the state constitution by creating an overarching public education executive and giving Harrison that job as Perdue wanted. The General Assembly in March changed state law to allow Harrison to serve as both schools CEO and chairman of the state school board. It was the first bill Perdue signed into law after taking office in January.

But only voters could decide to replace the schools superintendent they elect with an appointed administrator at the top of the education bureaucracy by approving a constitutional amendment, Hobgood said.

North Carolina is one of 13 states that elect their chief school administrators.