RALEIGH -- Although a national proponent of the "controlled choice" assignment model considers diversity a key to success, Wake County's school board chairman said Wednesday that race or income will not decide which schools students attend.
Ron Margiotta said the board's priorities in creating zones for more than 140,000 students do not include diversity. Rather, it aims to honor families' school choices and to provide stability.
Board members on both sides of Wake's school assignment fight are interested in the controlled choice approach. Those in the minority hope such a model will help keep school populations more demographically balanced; those in the majority hope the approach will give parents more choice and allow for school system growth.
The plan could accomplish these and other goals, but that all depends on the guidelines the board decides to use.
"People shouldn't read things to mean we're putting students in school because of their socioeconomic status," Margiotta said. "That's a thing of the past."
His remarks echoed those of fellow majority member John Tedesco, who said Tuesday that no specific measure of diversity will be used to assign students.
Michael Alves, a Massachusetts consultant who has helped districts with the controlled choice approach for decades, said Wednesday in Raleigh that such a plan has to take diversity into account to gain broad support.
"In the end, what's important is to look at the children who reside in that zone to make sure that they are not one race or one economic level," Alves told elected officials at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. "There's no cookie-cutter approach."
Alves spent Monday through Wednesday in the Triangle meeting with everyone from a school board committee to local business leaders to state legislators to the Rev. William Barber, state president of the NAACP.
Brought to town by the chamber and the nonprofit Wake Education Partnership, Alves walked into a blistering community argument. He was here to offer his take on the possible future of Wake schools to a school board majority that took diversity off the table in March before starting to craft a new assignment plan.
Where to draw the line
The plan being developed would divide the county into attendance zones that are supposed to allow children to go to schools in their communities, choosing among a variety of schools that each zone is supposed to include. Among the challenges facing the system is where to draw the lines and what factors will be used in assigning students.
During his talks, Alves faced questions about Margiotta's assertion earlier this month that he has no intention of creating high-poverty or low-performing schools.
"How do you ensure this diversity within the zones in a county as large as Wake, where we don't have diversity in our housing patterns?" state Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat, asked Alves at the presentation.
What criteria used
Under controlled choice, Alves said, a governing body uses variables such as zone size, racial diversity and low-income housing patterns to design districts within which parents can choose among a variety of schools. If a design ignores important concerns, such as student diversity or school quality, it's likely to fail for lack of political support, Alves said.
In the model Wake is considering, students wouldn't be assigned to specific schools. Instead, their parents would pick from several schools in their zone or from countywide magnet schools. School leaders with the most votes on the nine-member board would decide how to assign the students.
Margiotta said the zones would be drawn to reflect the natural diversity of the county. He said the school system is considering the controlled-choice approach because leaders can't possibly meet every parental request for a school assignment.
"We're not going to develop zones with gerrymandering," Margiotta said. "Within the zones there will be some natural diversity. The keys will be choice and stability."
Margiotta reiterated that it's not the board majority's intention to create high-poverty schools. But he said he's not going to look at the poverty level at individual schools.
Instead, he said, he'll want to know whether a school is meeting the needs of its students and whether changes need to be made to improve academic achievement.
"It's not for the school board to determine how many low-income students should be at a school, but to determine where children need to go to school and to address any problems that may come up at the schools," Margiotta said.
"We're not social engineers," he added. "We're committed to providing equal opportunity for students."
Margiotta said he respects Alves and his ideas, but that the board will decide which to use. For his part, Alves said, he is willing to come to Wake County to work on a plan, but only if the plan is based on fairness.
Alves hasn't seen zones
Do the zones being developed by Tedesco and a student assignment committee meet that test?
"I haven't seen his zones yet," Alves said.
County Commissioner Betty Lou Ward left Wednesday's session at the chamber unclear about how the new plan would avoid creating high-poverty schools. She's also concerned about the hostility that the dispute has caused.
"The rift in the community that has been created in the last few months may be tough to overcome," said Ward, a Democrat who is critical of the school board majority.
