Tedesco objects to meeting venue

RALEIGH -- When federal officials planned a community meeting as part of an investigation into the Wake County school system, they asked a local civil rights group to find a site for it.

But at least one member of the Wake school board says that the request - and the chosen location - smack of bias by the investigating agency.

The civil rights group, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, is among the organizations that filed the complaint that led to the probe in the first place.

The coalition complained to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, contending that the Wake school board engaged in racial discrimination when it eliminated socioeconomic diversity as a factor in determining which students go to which schools.

The coalition's chosen location for Wednesday's meeting: Martin Street Baptist Church, a downtown landmark that hosted several events opposing the changes to the student-assignment policy.

John Tedesco, a school board member who voted to end the former diversity-based assignment system, would have liked the Office for Civil Rights to have chosen a different location, or at least a different site-selection group.

"If they wanted to hear from both sides, they should have contacted the school system," Tedesco said, adding that a high school might make a more neutral site.

Michael Evans, a schools spokesman, said that Wake schools were not consulted about the location.

"The purpose of this on-site visit to Wake County, which includes the community meeting scheduled for May 4, is to obtain information as OCR conducts its investigation of the allegations raised in this complaint against the Wake County Schools," Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the Office for Civil Rights, wrote in an email statement.

Bradshaw did not address the propriety of letting a plaintiff in a civil rights complaint pick the site for a hearing on the complaint.

"Our first community meeting will be at the Martin Street Baptist Church," the statement said. "OCR plans to conduct an additional on-site investigation which will include a second community meeting at another location."

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups in the complaint to the Office for Civil Rights last year.

"The Office of Civil Rights wanted to have a communitywide meeting," said Anita Earls, executive director of the coalition. "They gave us the date and time and asked us to find a venue."

She added: "The purpose is for them to listen to the experiences and the concerns of the community."

Tedesco said the meeting would be a "staged event," where federal officials would only hear one side of the story.

He has previously questioned the fairness of the investigation, considering that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has publicly criticized the school board's elimination of the diversity policy.