Some Wake County black leaders are outraged by Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams' statement this week that the town doesn't want any more students from Southeast Raleigh. They call his remarks coded language directed at poor, minority students.

Williams, who is white, defended his town's stance and respectfully shook off charges of bias. The issue is not race, he said, but Garner schools being asked to shoulder more than their share of students on free and reduced lunch -- 60 percent and 70 percent, in some cases.

Still, several black leaders are calling for a meeting to iron out bruised feelings and to meet shared goals for Southeast Raleigh -- a move Williams said he welcomes.

"I'm optimistic that cooler heads will prevail," the mayor said.

The dust-up started when Garner leaders held up approval of a new elementary school until Wake County officials could promise it would not exceed a goal of 40 percent of students receiving subsidized lunches, the gauge for measuring family income. They also want school officials to tell them which areas they will assign to the new Bryan Road Elementary School.

"We as a community don't want more Southeast Raleigh students coming to Garner, with all due respect to them," Williams said Tuesday.

On Thursday, Southeast Raleigh leader Bruce Lightner wrote Williams, calling his statement a "throwback attitude" that slaps the youth of Southeast Raleigh in the face.

Tongue in cheek, Lightner suggested that Williams instruct Garner residents to stop seeking jobs in Raleigh and that the town pass an ordinance discouraging Raleigh's black residents from shopping in Garner.

Lightner, son of Raleigh's first black mayor, has since spoken with Williams, and both described their conversation as productive. Lightner agreed that the threshold of subsidized-lunch students should not top 40 percent, in Garner and otherwise.

But Williams' comments still stung. The mayor may not have said black students specifically, Lightner said, but given Southeast Raleigh's history from segregation forward, the comments were impossible to take any other way.

"When somebody gives me the impression that they're insulting the integrity of black kids in Southeast Raleigh, I'm going to speak up, and that's the impression I got," Lightner said. "He probably didn't mean it that way, but that's the impression I got."

Williams' statement resonated outside of Southeast Raleigh, too. The Rev. David Forbes, a black civil rights leader who lives in Garner, has also requested a meeting with Williams. He called the statement the "last straw" in a string of insulting comments toward black students coming from Garner.

"This was by far the boldest and most racist and classist and nonmetropolitan statement," Forbes said.

A perception among some in Southeast Raleigh is that Garner is more worried about its ability to attract quality development than about the welfare of Southeast Raleigh students.

Octavia Rainey, a black Southeast Raleigh community leader, said it is ridiculous to think poor students hurt property value.

"They're going to school there," she said. "They're not living there. And you do have low-income people living in Garner."

On The News & Observer's blog that focuses on education in Wake County (blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed), Williams found much support Friday. The bulk of comments dismissed race as a motive and called Wake County's policy of busing poor students unproductive to the whole system.

"Bruce, as usual, goes off on feelings rather than facts," wrote Venita Peyton, a Republican who is running for county commissioner and is black. "If he and other 'leaders' had spoken up earlier and been paying attention, perhaps our children would be closer to schools like Poe or Barwell Elementary rather than being bused all the way to Garner."

Lightner said he would love for black students to go to school in their own neighborhoods. But most of those in Southeast Raleigh are magnet schools drawing students from other neighborhoods.

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