Frustrated over student reassignments, Garner town leaders have asked their attorney whether they can sue the county school board to keep more Garner children closer to home.

"If this lawsuit moves ahead, it's about neighborhood schools," said Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams. "It's about Garner students going to neighborhood schools."

Bill Anderson, the town attorney, said he hasn't finished researching whether the town could sue the school system, and on what legal grounds. Ann Majestic, the school board's attorney, did not return calls.

Wake County school leaders say they're confident they would win any legal battle, but Garner's stance is drawing interest from groups who want to weaken the board's broad reassignment powers. Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly said it might take the courts to produce change, pointing to what happened in Charlotte.

In 1999, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Potter sided with a group of white parents in ending Charlotte's 30-year-old system of court-ordered desegregation.

"I find hope in that parents affected by an arrogant school system have been able to find redress in the courts," Weatherly said.

Advocates for Greater Garner, a group of business and civic leaders working closely with elected officials, say they plan to meet Jan. 3 with lawyers who represented the Charlotte families. There are key differences between reassignment fights in Charlotte and Wake, but the school board's authority is a critical issue in both communities.

Wake's dispute focuses on the school district's ability to assign its 128,072 students in the way it thinks best. Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning, says the district uses all available space to fill new and existing schools and to make sure all schools have a diverse mixture of students.

"Our focus is on Wake County," said Wake Schools Superintendent Del Burns. "We have to view this as a school system, not a system of schools."

In Garner's case, the anger is triggered by the number of area schools with large percentages of poor children -- rates often much greater than the county average.

"Garner's schools are no longer representative of Garner," said Paul Capps, a real estate agent and spokesman for Advocates for Greater Garner. "It's hurting Garner. It's hurting property values."

Garner leaders blame the problem on Wake's practice of busing some low-income students from Southeast Raleigh to Garner schools, as well as the district's magnet and year-round schools programs. Students who live near downtown are often bused to Garner to free space for middle-class students who attend magnets.

Magnets are designed to entice suburban, middle-class students to attend inner-city schools by offering special programs. Most of those schools would otherwise enroll mostly poor students. Voluntary year-round programs are also more popular among middle- and upper-class families.

Between magnets and year-round schools, Garner leaders say, town schools have lost more than 20 percent of their enrollment.

Garner leaders say they had hoped their support of November's $970 million school construction bond issue would lead to major changes in the draft reassignment plan released this month. But they say the plan does little to change the demographics of their town's schools.

"They're always saying they're listening, but nothing is getting done," Capps said. "We're not going to take it anymore."

Williams said the last straw was the recommendation that some families in the Arbor Greene subdivision be reassigned to Timber Drive Elementary despite living within a half-mile of Rand Road Elementary.

"It doesn't make any sense that we'd have to take a bus now instead of just walking to school," said Michael Meador, an Arbor Greene resident whose children could be reassigned.

With community opposition rising, Garner's Board of Aldermen unanimously voted this week to have Anderson, the attorney, study possible legal action against the school system. Anderson will report back Jan. 16.

Capps said Garner leaders will know whether administrators are taking their concerns seriously when a revised reassignment plan is presented to the board Jan. 9.

Capps wants to see a significant number of students from Southeast Raleigh reassigned to the magnet schools closer to where they live. He hopes that change will entice more Garner students to stay in town.

Business leaders also want Wake to use community schools in an area well beyond the formal city limits of Garner.

"We are asking that the school system make our schools reflective of our population," Capps said. "If not, we will pursue litigation."

Dulaney said the changes proposed by Garner leaders would create too many empty seats at a time of record student growth and weaken overall interest in the magnet school program.

"We've made the best recommendations we could," Dulaney said. "We're always looking at a global perspective. We're not looking at just schools in one area."