RALEIGH -- Supporters of Wake County’s discarded socioeconomic diversity policy are hailing the school board’s decision to halt work on a new community schools plan.
School board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman broke with her Republican colleagues on Tuesday night to back a motion from Democratic board members to scrap work on a plan to divide the county into 16 community assignment zones. Goldman insists that they’re still moving to a system of community-based schools.
But opponents of the move to community schools are calling the vote a victory.
“We believe yesterday's vote to stop the student assignment process is a step in the right direction,” said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, in a written statement. “The NAACP and other advocates have said on numerous occasions that the best course of action would be to rescind the Board's 5-4 decision last March to throw out Wake County's socioeconomic diversity program.”
The state NAACP has filed a federal civil rights complaint accusing Wake of intentional discrimination with its new assignment policy. The NAACP also filed the complaint that’s causing a national accrediting agency to do a special review of Wake’s policies.
Tuesday’s 5-3 vote tosses out a motion passed in March that called for development of community assignment zones. But the latest vote still leaves in place the policy change approved by the board in May that dropped the use of socioeconomic diversity in the student assignment policy.
Leaders of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, a group that supported the old diversity policy, said today they were encouraged by Tuesday’s vote. Yevonne Brannon, chairwoman of the group, said they finally feel that their voice is being heard.
But Brannon also called for the board to not make any additional reassignment changes for the 2011-12 school year. The resolution passed on Tuesday says they’ll leave in place the reassignment changes made for the 2011-12 school year by the prior school board while reserving the right to make some additional moves.
“We don’t want this to be a ‘stay of execution,’ after which we move to a plan that resegregates students and creates more high poverty schools,” Brannon said in a written statement. Rather, we hope that this vote signals a reinvigorated dialogue between the School Board and the community.”
The student assignment committee had been working on a plan that stressed stability, family choice and proximity. But the reassignment changes that would have been triggered by the proposed boundary lines and the elimination of guaranteed base school assignments for every address had drawn vocal opposition.
“I am doing what’s in my heart and my conscience," Goldman said before Tuesday’s vote. "This process isn’t working. We only have one chance to do it right. The zone model isn’t working."
School board attorney Ann Majestic said today that Tuesday’s resolution doesn’t require a second vote because no policies are being changed. Some critics of the resolution had hoped for a revote because the resolution passed in March calling for the community assignment zones required two votes.
