Turmoil Continues at Wake County School Board Meetings

From The Public School Forum's Friday Report

This week's Wake County School Board meeting was again the scene of police patrols, protests and multiple arrests as the board hashed out the details of a new student assignment plan. As reported in the Wake Education Partnership's In Context, "the protestors' resistance was greater than previous meetings, the police response was faster and the resulting chaos unfolded in front of dozens of reporters and television cameras,” resulting in nearly 20 arrests.

Emotions are running high as the board's Student Assignment Committee prepares to meet next week to hear a presentation on what is being called "Controlled choice”, an alternative which looks to give parents more choices without creating high poverty schools.

In response to the chaos around the county's board meetings, NC SPIN issued a challenge this week to board member John Tedesco and NAACP head Reverend William Barber to "sit down to some reasonable, unemotional discussion about the benefits and challenges between the diversity policy and neighborhood schools.”Click here to read the challenge.

While the debates are likely to continue, this issue of diversity in public schools is moving into shoulders of the NC General Assembly.During the final days of this year's session, a legislative study commission was charged with seeing whether diversity helps public schools or whether the state should help it along by changing the way schools are funded."We need to look at what Wake is doing,” said Representative Rick Glazier."This is an issue that is truly important.This is one of the most successful and largest districts in the country making a major change and the question is why?”