Raleigh mayor seeks experts, leaders to analyze school board

RALEIGH -- With an eye toward a potential lawsuit, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is recruiting Raleigh community leaders and legal experts to scrutinize how students get assigned to schools now that the Wake County school board has eliminated assignments based on socioeconomic diversity.

Meeker, who is married to Wake school board member Anne McLaurin, said legal action could follow, if it appears that the school board's yet-to-be-released student assignment plan violates the state constitutional rights to a sound education.

"As mayor, this is very disconcerting," Meeker said. "It's already hurt Wake County's reputation."

Meeker told members of the East Raleigh Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday that he’s trying to enlist experts to see if the school board’s new student assignment plan violates state constitutional law. The new board hopes to approve by the end of next year a new plan that would divide Wake into different zones with students going to schools in their community.

Any legal action wouldn't be on behalf of the city, Meeker said.

If it the plan does appear to deny students a sound education, which the state constitution requires, Meeker said he would like to enlist civic and business groups in the Raleigh area to challenge the plan.

The state NAACP has also threatened to sue the school board on similar grounds.

Meeker, a harsh critic of the new school board majority that is implementing the changes, lashed into them at Monday’s meeting.

“We have people who are not from the area, who don't share our values, who are the majority on the school board who are taking steps to have schools that have the majority of well to do people in one set of schools and not as well to do people in another set of schools,” Meeker said Monday.

In April, the Raleigh City Council passed a resolution expressing opposition to the school board’s plan to end the diversity policy and go to community-based schools.

School board chairman Ron Margiotta questioned Meeker’s threat.

"Our intention is to make assignment zones that are satisfactory to everyone,” Margiotta said. “To talk about suing prior to that is very premature"

School board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman, a member of the majority faction, questioned how Meeker and others could consider suing over a plan which has not been completed.

"I question the motive," Goldman said. "I can't imagine our school board attorney would let us slip by a plan that is unconstitutional."