A Chicago metal processor announced Monday that it will expand its facility in Wayne County and create 44 jobs over the next three years.

Joseph Ryerson & Sons plans to invest $3 million to move into a second building that will be part of its fabrication facility in Pikeville, about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh.

The company will receive a $100,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund if it meets hiring and investment goals.

The new jobs will pay an average wage of $33,540. The Wayne County average is $29,848.

Ryerson, which has service centers in Charlotte, Greensboro and Youngsville, processes and distributes various metals, including stainless and carbon steel, aluminum products, brass and copper.

It sells the metals in sheets, coils and other shapes to customers.

Ryerson also makes parts for rail cars, heavy equipment, agricultural equipment, wind turbines and other industries. 

You can add Newsweek to the list of national publications that's putting an unfavorable light on the Wake County school board' majority's efforts to end the diversity policy.

In an item that will appear in the March 29 issue of Newsweek, Tony Dokoupil suggests that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan take a closer look at the claims of resegregation going on in North Carolina's public schools. He notes Wake along with the state NAACP complaint against Wayne County's schools and the increase in 90 percent poverty schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg since the district ended race-based busing.

"And last month in Wake County, a newly elected school board voted to end an income-based diversity program that has been copied across the country," Dokoupil writes.

The state NAACP is painting a picture of a sharply racially divided school system in the federal civil rights complaint it filed today against the Wayne County school system.

The complaint focuses on one of the six districts in the school system that is located in Goldsboro and is almost all black and poor. This district is contrasted with other parts of the school system, including one district that is largely white and not low-income.

We're getting a preview of what the state NAACP might do if Wake goes to neighborhood schools.

The state NAACP announced today it will file a federal Title VI complaint against the Wayne County school system. The complaint says that Wayne County's students "are deprived of a constitutional education by the policies and practices that adversely impact particularly African American and other students of color."

The NAACP has said that it might file a Title VI complaint against Wake based on the policies the new school board implements.

Wayne County school officials have put the brakes on a cash for grades fundraising effort at a Goldsboro middle school.

The school district reacted to today's article by Lynn Bonner, in which she reported that a $20 donation to Rosewood Middle School would have gotten a student 20 test points — 10 extra points on two tests of the student's choosing. That could raise a B to an A, or a failing grade to a D.

Are any individual Durham schools following similar policies? Or any other sort of classroom incentives to reward fundraising?

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Wayne County school officials have put the brakes on a cash for grades fundraising effort at a Goldsboro middle school.

The school district reacted to today's article by Lynn Bonner, in which she reported that a $20 donation to Rosewood Middle School would have gotten a student 20 test points — 10 extra points on two tests of the student's choosing. That could raise a B to an A, or a failing grade to a D.

Are any individual Wake schools following similar policies?

Today's article included a Raleigh parent who objected this year when her daughter's social studies teacher at Knightdale High School had students bring to school tissues and hand sanitizer. The supplies counted for 25 percent of a "supply check" grade.