srocco@newsobserver.com
New Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata has lunch with Carnage Middle School students on his first day on the job.
RALEIGH -- New Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata got an up-close look at the magnet school program on his first day on the job today.
Tata toured Enloe High School and Carnage Middle School, a pair of inner-city Raleigh magnet schools which have offered unique programs since 1982 to lure in suburban students. The role of magnet schools is at the heart of the debate of the role neighborhood schools should play in the state’s largest school system.
In addition to seeing programs that are routinely offered at non-magnet schools, Tata saw programs that are typically only found at magnet schools such as Enloe High’s dance program and Carnage Middle’s orchestra and Japanese classes.
“You walk away from Enloe seeing the diversity of the student body and the diversity of the courses,” Tata said.
Tata said he had asked to visit some schools in Southeast Raleigh. Most of Wake’s 32 magnet schools are in or near Southeast Raleigh.
Magnet school parents and students have been outspoken critics of the school board’s elimination of the diversity policy and the move toward neighborhood schools. If the school board moves thousands of Southeast Raleigh students out of suburban schools to neighborhood schools it could take away many openings at magnet schools for suburban students.
Some non-magnet parents have complained about not being able to get the same type of courses for their children.
Also today, Tata met with all the principals this morning and toured Aversboro Elementary, a non-magnet school in Garner.
Tata, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who was chief operating officer for the D.C. Public School System, was hired by the school board last month.
Tata said he realizes that the school system faces a number of challenges such as “the 800-pound gorilla in the room” in the form of student assignment, dealing with the loss of $70 million or more in funding this year and investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and an accreditating agency.
Tata said his first priority is to protect teachers in the budget. He also said he’s spending his time now meeting and listening with parents, teachers and students. During today’s visit to Carnage Middle, he stopped to have lunch with the students.
