Raleigh North Carolina school district rejects failed social engineering programs, moves toward common sense. -Ed.
RALEIGH — With the school board’s vote Tuesday night to end its diversity policy, Wake County began a politically bruising slog to divide the county into community school zones.
The number of zones is undetermined. The cost of the new system is uncertain. And as the board’s majority fleshes out a plan to assign the district’s 140,000 students to schools as close as possible to their homes, it must fend off charges of resegregation by opponents who vow to keep fighting them.
The deeply divided board eliminated diversity as a goal in the assignment policy with a 5-4 vote, making family proximity to schools the priority. The fight about the diversity policy, which depends on the economic status of families, drew national attention as the majority reversed decades of policy.
"It’s terrific for the parents of Wake County," said Allison Backhouse, a leader of Wake CARES, a parents group that backs the new majority. "We’ve fought for many years to be recognized."
Chairman Ron Margiotta and members John Tedesco, Debra Goldman, Chris Malone and Deborah Prickett voted down last-ditch efforts by the board minority to include students’ economic status as an assignment factor, and ignored student protesters’ loud chants when the final vote came."Hey hey! Ho ho! Resegregation’s got to go!" about 20 protesters shouted.
A resolution passed in March called for the board to spend nine to 15 months dividing Wake County into community assignment zones with the goal of assigning students to schools as close as possible to their homes.
Changes will likely not take effect on a large scale until 2012-13. But members of the majority say the result will be greater family stability and choice, including better performance by low-income students.
"It means we’ll treat all children fairly," Tedesco said after the vote.
Numerous factors, including the state constitution and federal law, prevent Wake schools from resegregating, Tedesco said.
Prickett said families and students will benefit from living closer to schools, allowing more parental involvement.
But Keith Sutton, a member of the board’s minority faction, said the fallout from the vote remains uncertain because there’s little detail about how the new community zone plan will work in North Carolina’s largest school district.
"I don’t think anybody’s putting any stock in the plan right now because we don’t know what it’s going to look like," Sutton said.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/19/489343/diversity-policy-tossed-amid-cries.html