RALEIGH -- Armed police and crowds of protesters no longer faced off in the hallways as the Wake County school board cut its last ties to a diversity-based assignment system Tuesday.
It was the board's least-tumultuous meeting since a new majority took control in December with a mission to throw out the policies that took socioeconomic status into account when assigning Wake's 140,000 students to schools.
Taking care of final details before the actual drawing up of zones begins, the board on Tuesday approved a revision of student transfer guidelines to conform to a new assignment policy favoring neighborhood schools.
Board member Deborah Prickett noted the board already has reassigned more than 1,000 students for next year but has heard a dramatically reduced number of complaints.
"This is the first time in a long time in Wake County that we have had family-friendly reassignments," Prickett said.
Dr. Anne McLaurin, a leading voice among the minority contingent on the board, fought to the end the idea that diversity should play no role in making decisions on transfers.
"I also object to the deletion of ... greater socioeconomic and achievement diversity" as a factor on transfers, she said.
Chairman Ron Margiotta and the four other votes in the majority almost hit a snag when board attorney Jonathan Blumberg announced that they needed a two-thirds vote to change the transfer policy after one reading.
Meetings on transfer requests are to begin today. Failing to pass the resolution would have meant rescheduling countless transfer hearings, so minority members Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton voted to waive a second reading.
The night of transition brought some strange contrasts.
The entire board saluted the magnet system and the 14 Wake schools that won recognition as "schools of excellence" or "schools of distinction" from Magnet Schools of America.
Margiotta praised the schools in a statement that included references to the magnets' role in creating balance in school populations and to Wake schools' national reputation for excellence. The new assignment policy removes any use of magnets as a tool to balance school populations, and supporters of the new board have long argued that Wake's "national reputation" is a sham with little basis in reality.
Margiotta also had to ask for retroactive approval for his hiring, without consulting board members, Raleigh attorney Kieran Shanahan to assist longtime school board attorneys Tharrington Smith LLP in a suit that claimed the school board had violated North Carolina's open meetings law. Members approved the hire after some objected to the after-the-fact approval.
"It doesn't matter how I vote," McLaurin said.
