A parent group filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday to block the Wake County school system from converting 22 schools to a year-round schedule this summer.

Wake CARES contends that requiring only some students to attend year-round schools violates the state constitution's guarantee of a "uniform system" of schools with "equal opportunities" provided for all students. Parents argued that their children will have less access to extracurricular and co-curricular activities such as summer camps than those families at traditional-calendar schools.

"The courts should protect the children from the whims of the bureaucracy," said Patrice Lee, a director of Wake CARES, which held a news conference at the Salem Street Soda Shop in Apex.

No trial date has been scheduled for the lawsuit, which was filed in Wake County Superior Court. The group hopes a judge will hear their request for an injunction to block the conversions within the next 10 days.

Superintendent Del Burns said the district's attorneys need to review the lawsuit before they can comment.

But school leaders said if Wake CARES gets the requested injunction, it would be hard to come up with a way on such short notice to house the 8,000 new students expected this fall. Under state law, parents must be notified by May 15 where their children will attend classes for the coming year.

"It would cause a mad scramble," said school board member Lori Millberg. "I can't see a judge giving the injunction."

The fight over mandatory year-round calendars has been one of the most contentious issues in Wake County in recent years.

The year-round calendar can handle more students than traditional schools by putting the buildings in constant use with four staggered schedules, or tracks. School officials say this would help them handle growth this fall by accommodating more than 3,500 additional students.

But many parents object to the possibility of having children on different schedules and the loss of longer summer vacations. They argue that Wake could handle the growth by having schools revert to the maximum enrollments they have had over the past four years.

A loss of benefits?

In their lawsuit, the parents contend that requiring some students to attend year-round schools while the majority remain at traditional-calendar schools denies all 128,072 students a "uniform school system." The conversions affect at least 18,000 students at those 22 schools.

Due to the much shorter summer break on the year-round calendar, Wake CARES says children at year-round schools will have less access to summer arts and academic programs.

Kathleen Brennan, a director of Wake CARES, cited how the year-round calendar could prevent her 14-year-old daughter, Beth, from attending Duke University's Talent Identification program and the N.C. School of the Arts' summer session. Beth's middle school, Salem Middle School, is one of three middle schools being converted.

"I don't think it's fair to force some parents to convert and deny them the benefits of the traditional calendar," Brennan said.

Jack Boger, dean of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law and an expert on civil rights education law, said Wake CARES has a "novel argument." But he said they don't have much precedent for arguing that equal opportunity extends toward calendars.

"It would be an uphill fight for the parents and their attorneys," Boger said.

Parents' long battle

Parents have been fighting the conversions since last year. They failed to persuade voters in November to reject a $970 million school construction bond referendum that funded the conversions. But they successfully lobbied county commissioners to not turn over the money approved in the bonds on the grounds that the school district wasn't providing enough alternatives to families who could not make the year-round calendar work for them.

The school board voted last month to proceed with the conversions by paying for them out of their own funds. Parents had lobbied the commissioners to sue the school district, but the commissioners who oversee school funding chose not to go to court.

In the end, the parents hired Robert Hunter, a Greensboro lawyer who works for the state Republican Party on election law cases, and Bill Peaslee, a Cary lawyer and a former chief of staff for the state GOP.

Wake CARES says it has support countywide, but most of its parents are from Apex and western Cary, areas heavily affected by the conversions.

At the news conference Tuesday, Wake CARES was backed by Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly, Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams and Holly Springs Mayor Dick Sears.

"We've been left out and ignored," Williams said. "It's time for litigation all across the county."