RALEIGH -- Protesters staged a 1960s-style sit-in at Tuesday's Wake County School Board meeting, spending more than an hour occupying members' seats to express deep opposition to the panel's direction.
Police led the protesters out in handcuffs.
Those arrested were the Rev. William Barber, state NAACP leader; Duke professor and author Tim Tyson; Mary D. Williams, an activist and Wake schools parent; and Nancy Petty, who is senior minister of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. Raleigh police arrested them on second-degree trespassing charges about 6:20 p.m.
They started their protest on the same day the board received a schedule from school administrators with hard details on how to shift North Carolina's largest school district toward assigning students to schools closest to their neighborhoods.
Administrators also said they would draw up plans for a school bond issue to be placed before Wake voters next year. Such a vote could become a de facto, countywide referendum on the agenda of change pushed by the school board's ruling majority.
The four protesters vowed to stay until arrested as an act of civil disobedience to protest the board's previous votes to dismantle the district's policy of busing students to maintain socioeconomic diversity.
"We're going to give them what they want," school board Chairman Ron Margiotta said during an extended recess the board took during the protest.
The meeting resumed 30 minutes after the arrests. Afterwards, Margiotta said: "We gave them every opportunity not to be arrested."
A noneducator?
Margiotta said the protests wouldn't alter the board's direction. Indeed, the action didn't deter the board majority from going ahead with plans that could allow them to hire a noneducator to replace Del Burns as superintendent.
By a 5-4 vote, the board gave initial approval to changes that would eliminate requirements that the new person have a doctorate, a superintendent's certificate from the state or have worked within a school within the past decade. The changes would also eliminate the requirement that Wake conduct an internal search first.
"We want to be able to consider people from all fields," board member John Tedesco said.
Members of the board minority and several speakers during a public comment period objected to the possibility that a non-educator could be running the state's largest district.
"It's important that whoever becomes superintendent have a passion for learning and teaching as opposed to a passion for running a business," board member Kevin Hill said.
The minority members blocked the majority from being able to approve the changes on one vote. The board also voted 5-4 to hire Chicago-based Heidrick & Struggles to do the search for $82,500 plus expenses. It had the highest fee of the four firms considered by the board.
'We shall not be moved'
Before the disruption of the meeting, the activists first spoke at length during a comment period. Margiotta and board attorney Ann Majestic conferred about possible reactions when the speakers ignored time limits and the chairman's gavel.
"We are here for a nonviolent act of conscience," Barber said, proclaiming that he was ready to be jailed if necessary to oppose actions of the board in changing longstanding system policies that reinforced school diversity.
"Like a tree planted by the water, we shall not be moved," Barber said in the words of a familiar song of the 1960s civil rights movement.
Margiotta had recessed the board when the leaders were first scheduled to speak. At about 5 p.m. the board returned to listen to them, but Margiotta called another recess after nearly 30 minutes of speeches and singing by the activists.
All the speakers said the board's move toward neighborhood schools amounted to a return to the South's segregated schools of the pre-civil rights era. Tyson said Tedesco was profoundly misguided for comparing the changes in Wake County schools to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which dismantled school segregation.
The board majority, which was swept into office in elections last fall, has said its actions are overdue corrections to a system that favored affluent neighborhoods near downtown and concealed low levels of performance by economically disadvantaged students by busing them across town.
The protesters on Tuesday countered that a string of actions by the board, including ending busing for diversity, were designed to suit supporters of the board majority, not the entire community.
"Who does benefit from your recent decisions?" Petty asked. "Our entire community? Or selected communities where the wealthiest live?"
History lessons
During about an hour's sit-in in the board member's seats, Tyson and the others discussed civil rights history as board members gathered in a nearby meeting room. It was necessary, the protesters said, to take action to make their position clear before the board's plans were wholly in place.
"They won't be able to say we did nothing," Tyson said. "They won't be able to say we sat idly by."
The four protesters were all quickly released from the Wake County jail, after promising they would appear at their July court dates.
"We broke a lesser law," Barber said.
After the meeting, board member Keith Sutton wouldn't say whether he approved of the protesters' actions.
"When it seemed that no one was listening to them, they felt it was the only way to get the attention of the board and the board chairman," Sutton said.
But Margiotta said the protest would only harden positions in the already heated debate over the schools' direction.
"It's not the way I would have done it," he said.
Staff writer Sarah Ovaska contributed to this report.
