RALEIGH -- Members of Wake County's school board are walking a fine line as they craft a detailed replacement for the system's diversity-based student assignment policy.
The board effectivelydiscarded socio economicdiversity as a basis for assignment in a "directive" passed after emotional debate this month. But they have yet to create a detailed successor policy, one designed to assign students closer to their homes and move them as little as possible.
In a committee meeting Wednesday, members of the board majority who voted for the change sought to give shape and priorities to its new plan while soothing fears that the new "community-based" system will lead to resegregation of the county's 140,000-student system.
In addition, the board must submit a separate document assuring federal magnet-school grants administrators that Wake remains committed to "voluntary desegregation."
"When we change a policy that does not address desegregation in the same way it has in the past, ... this is going to look very different," said board member Anne McLaurin, a member of the board minority.
The board's policy committee, meeting Wednesday, debated what part commitment to voluntary diversity should play in the redrawn assignment policy. The committee did not vote on the policy and will revisit it April 28.
A draft document presented by policy committee chairwoman Debra Goldman deleted the former policy's reference to a student's below-grade performance as a potential factor in assignment.
"I think there has to be somehow to look at performance of students and not have a whole school full of low-performing students," board member Carolyn Morrison said.
Goldman said the draft policy's commitment to academic success by all children incorporates the former provision on below-grade performance.
Board member Keith Sutton said the panel should keep in mind the amount of local and national attention focused on the system's decision to remove economic diversity as a factor inassignments and replace it with commitments to keeping students closer to home in stable assignments.
"You cross out 'diverse' and now it says 'stable,' what does that say to you?" Sutton asked. "Does the theme of diversity still ring through the document?"
After the meeting, Goldman said she favors including language committing the system to voluntary diversity in the new policy.
"I think that somehow we have to make that link," she said. "There has to be something that gets that message across."
