RALEIGH -- Tony Tata, Wake County's newly named schools superintendent, will make a series of public appearances next week before schools staff, the school board and other groups including the conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association, board chairman Ron Margiotta said today.
Tata, 51, a retired Army Brigadier General, will arrive in town on Thursday and make a two-day series of as many as 16 appearances, Margiotta said. Margiotta said that an earlier report from the Northern Wake Republican Club was in error in stating that Tata’s first appearance would at 6:30 p.m. Thursday before the Wake County Taxpayers Association.
Former state legislator Russell Capps, one of the founders of the taxpayers association, said he arranged the appearance with school board chair Ron Margiotta after hearing that Tata would arrive in Raleigh on Thursday.
Margiotta said Tata’s first stops would be with school personnel. He was selected Dec. 23 in a specially called meeting of the school board after a secret search.
“He'll be speaking to other groups that day – it's going to be a very busy schedule,” Margiotta said. “I'm looking to bring him hrough the county to counter some of the criticism we've heard. I think people are going to emerge with a better opinion of him.”
Tata, a 28-year Army veteran, will start work in Wake on Jan. 31 after spending 18 months as chief operating officer of the Washington, D.C., public schools. During his tenure in the D.C. schools he has made several appearances on network news shows and written blog posts critical of President Barack Obama.
Formed in 1994, the Taxpayers Association in July released a statement in support of the school board’s Republican majority, singling out, among other things “appreciation for your willingness to abandon failed policies and practices in favor of those which will empower our children to become educationally successful.”
The group’s Web site says that since its founding it has succeeded at “keeping tax growth from happening or limited it to a small amount in most jurisdictions.” The group is nonpartisan but has received donations from influential Republicans such as Wake businessman Robert Luddy and former state auditor Les Merritt.
