RALEIGH -- Wake County school board members who discarded the system's mandated diversity policy face the specter early this week of large-scale protests and civil disobedience, possible mass arrests and broadening resistance from religious and social-justice groups.
Opponents of the move to neighborhood schools plan to hold a mass march in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday, followed by a protest that could disrupt that afternoon's school board meeting. At the same time, the Northern Wake Republican Club has called for "164 solid conservative people" to attend the meeting "to counter the NAACP's rally."
Opponents of the board, boosted by recent endorsements by African-American denominations and the national NAACP, are casting their opposition to changes in Wake Schools as a moral imperative and a replay of the 1960s civil rights movement's role in integrating schools.
"If we have to pray together and go to jail together, forward ever, backward never," the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, recently said at a prayer vigil of supporters of the diversity policy.
But the Republican-backed majority on the nine-member board, winning victory after victory on 5-4 votes over the mostly Democratic minority, insists that it's simply restoring fairness and equity to a system that has shortchanged low-income students.
"We're continuing to move forward," said school board member John Tedesco, who will be the architect of a new assignment plan. "If they want to keep moving backward, we won't let them do that to us."
The back-and-forth rhetoric and long, contentious meetings are all taking place as major prizes in partisan politics await: four seats on the county board of commissioners in November elections and five on the school board next year.
School leaders plan to have extra security on hand Tuesday, and for the first time they will limit how many people can be in the building. They want to prevent a repeat of the protest that shut down the June 15 meeting for nearly two hours.
The conflict could be heightened by a convention in Raleigh of thousands of members of the AME Zion Church, a predominantly black denomination whose leadership Friday announced opposition to the board's decision to ditch the diversity policy.
"Your slight majority today is the aftermath of the church's silence," said Bishop Richard K. Thompson, leader of the Eastern N.C. district of the AME Zion Church. "We will no longer sit in our churches silent."
'Engineering theatrics'
Members of the Wake County school board majority who took office in December say they won't be deterred by the actions of the protesters. They say they plan to go ahead with their efforts to move toward neighborhood schools.
The Northern Wake Republicans, in a Friday posting to their e-mail list, encouraged conservatives to speak "in support of our school board's decision to stop forced busing."
"We are not looking for any trouble. If any trouble brews, we will walk away from it; that's not our purpose," said Donna Williams, president of the Republican group. "Our purpose is simply to show support for our school board and thank them for doing what they said they would do. That's it."
Barber says the change will lead to de facto resegregation; board members say it will provide family stability and choice.
"They're good at engineering theatrics," Tedesco said of protesters. "But when they're done with the theatrics, we'll continue to press forward with educating all our children."
A month ago, it looked as though the school fight might be dying down. After months of protests that had brought large crowds to school board meetings, attendance had dropped off after the board majority voted to eliminate the diversity policy.
By June 15, school leaders didn't have any police officers providing security. They were caught off guard that day when Barber and three other civil-rights activists took over the meeting and refused to give up the podium before occupying the seats of the board members.
Raleigh police were called in and eventually arrested the protesters, charging them all with second-degree trespassing. Last week, school board Chairman Ron Margiotta authorized letters barring the four protesters from being on school property.
'The fight isn't over'
Since the June arrests, several churches and social justice groups have joined the NAACP in opposing the school board majority and encouraging people to protest Tuesday, using sharp rhetoric and religious imagery to portray the school struggle as a battle between good and evil.
"The arrests sparked the community," said David Eisenstadt, 16, a rising junior at Enloe High School and a member of N.C. HEAT, a group of teenagers fighting to restore the diversity policy. "It told people that the fight isn't over."
The AME Zion Church, an influential black religious organization holding a national conference for church educators at the Raleigh Convention Center, is expected to provide many of the protesters for a Tuesday morning march from the center to the state Capitol for a noon rally.
Following the march and rally, Barber says a large group will show up at the Tuesday afternoon school board meeting. Barber won't explicitly say whether he'll attend the meeting and risk being arrested for trespassing, but he has said that "folks have to do what the Lord leads them to do" in terms of engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience that could lead to arrests.
"If we have enough people there, we could shut down the meeting," Eisenstadt said. "They'd have to listen to us."
Security for Tuesday
The protesters may be hamstrung in what they can do Tuesday.
The school system will pay eight off-duty police officers, working in shifts, to provide security at the meeting. Raleigh police are also expected to provide officers if needed.
"Now we're going to have to take precautions to have a safe and orderly meeting," Margiotta said.
School officials have announced that people who don't have seats for the meeting will no longer be allowed to wait in the hallways. They'll have to wait outside the school district's headquarters until a seat opens up. Officials are citing fire regulations for the change.
Claude Pope, chairman of the Wake County Republican Party, which helped elect the new members of the board majority, said he's confident that the protests won't cause the majority to back down.
"The school board isn't going to change if there are 200 people in the room or 4,000 people," Pope said. "They were elected to carry out a mandate, and they're doing that."
Yevonne Brannon, chairwoman of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, which backs the diversity policy, said opponents can keep the issue in the public's mind heading into this fall's election for the Wake board of county commissioners and next year's school board races.
"We had an election last year," Brannon said. "But we'll have more elections, this year and next year."
Staff writer Jim Wise contributed to this report.
