RALEIGH -- Federal education officials have turned down the Wake County school system’s request to reconsider its rejected $10.3 million magnet school grant application.
Interim Superintendent Donna Hargens had asked federal officials to reconsider Wake’s application because she contended that one of the reviewers incorrectly focused on gender issues and made factual errors when scoring the proposal.
But in a Nov. 17 letter to Hargens, Anna Hinton, director of Parental Options and Information for the U.S. Department of Education, stood by the unnamed reviewer,
“The Department relies on these expert reviewers to provide their independent assessment of the applications it receives,” Hinton wrote. “As such, we have no further comments on the review of your application beyond what is contained in the technical review form and are not able to answer specific questions about or provide additional insights on those scores or comments.”
Wake submitted the grant application in May amid the school board 's 5-4 decision to drop the use of diversity as a factor in student assignment.
In September, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that 36 school districts nationwide would share $100 million in magnet grant money this year with potentially that same amount over the following two years. Wake had wanted $10.3 million over three years.
When Wake got back its application, school officials saw that one reviewer gave a perfect score of 140. A second reviewer gave a score of 129. The third reviewer gave Wake a score of 112. All three reviewers are anonymous.
The reviewer being disputed by Wake repeatedly cited as weaknesses the lack of mention about how the grant would address gender. The reviewer writes that "race is too much of a factor."
But Wake school officials say that desegregating schools is the goal of the grant, not addressing gender issues.
"While Reader 3 is, of course, entitled to his/her opinion about whether race is over-emphasized in the [grant application], it seems inappropriate for him/her to substitute personal preferences for the stated guidelines of the competition," Hargens wrote in a Oct. 11 letter to Hinton.
Hargens also contended that the reviewer made several factual errors, including writing that Wake wanted to use the grant money to hire security guards to protect a greenhouse that would be built. Hargens notes that the application talked about providing security for the greenhouse, not about hiring guards.
In her response, Hinton said the 97 applications were scored by “independent expert reviewers selected from a pool of impartial an unbiased qualified educators, researchers, and evaluators.”
Wake planned to use the grant money to help new magnet programs at Smith Elementary School in Garner and Brentwood Elementary School and Millbrook High School, both in North Raleigh. School officials stressed Wake will still operate magnet programs at the three schools.
