Well, that's the way it works in a democratic republic such as the U.S. of A. and that piece of it known as Wake County. People with the fire and the gumption become candidates for office. If their message resonates, they attract followers and funding. And when Election Day comes, they win if their supporters can bestir themselves to go to the polls. Victors in the Wake school board races were candidates who caught a wave of public discontent and rode it handsomely, right up onto the beach.
Now comes the hard part. It's always easier to campaign than to govern. And as they savor their success, the candidates who campaigned for neighborhood schools also must weigh the responsibility they're about to assume.
Wake's current school board, with an eye toward that responsibility, has tried to avoid a pattern typical of troubled metropolitan school systems where economically struggling families too often mean academically struggling schools. Wake has sent some students to schools in the suburbs, and, with magnet schools, has lured others closer to downtown.
Diversity-based assignments, along with the shuffling needed to fill new schools in a fast-growing county, have been thorns in the sides of some suburban parents. Enough, in fact, to elect at least three candidates who think socioeconomic diversity should not figure in deciding which schools students will attend.
Backward ho?
The risk is that students assigned to schools in lower-income neighborhoods will lose out. That's because when enrollments tilt heavily toward the poor, the social ills that are all too common in poor neighborhoods can be a hindrance to classroom success. The schools have trouble holding onto good teachers, there are fewer high achievers to serve as role models and low expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.
The big picture also includes a sorting of enrollments by race because of the vestiges of racial discrimination in housing and the correlation between race and poverty. That would be a huge step backward towards the folly of separate but equal.
Not all of the anger directed at candidates aligned with the sitting board stemmed from opposition to diversity per se. But the effort to keep enrollments more or less balanced has pushed some students to schools outside their neighborhoods, meaning inconvenience and instability. Discontent has snowballed. And it has been magnified by the board's unpopular decision to force some students to attend schools operating on year-round schedules.
In a sense that was a self-inflicted wound on the board's part. But it came in the context of continual battling with the Board of Commissioners over budgets. Year-round schools save money; school leaders saw them as a necessary economy move. The one candidate bold enough to point out that the Wake schools have had to get by on short rations -- Lois Nixon of Cary -- was punished for her candor.
Exams to come
It's not clear whether the election outcome will set the stage for rapid abandonment of the system's diversity policy. The board's lineup won't be set until the winner of a seat representing Garner, Fuquay-Varina and Willow Spring is determined. But depending on how that goes, the nine-member board could wind up with five declared neighborhood school proponents. (Five of the board's seats were not up for election on Tuesday).
Either way, next year will bring a close re-examination of the board's core policies. But at the same time, board members should take care not to follow campaign rhetoric out the window. Wake cannot afford neighborhood schools for everyone, and even if it could, there would be a real risk that some of those schools would not do right by their students. Giving the schools in poor neighborhoods more money to overcome their disadvantages would likely be a tough sell.
Wake's students must be able to get an excellent education no matter where they are assigned to attend. That is the essence of equal opportunity, and the key to schools that truly serve the interests of all.
