Education

____________________ By Charlotte Huffman RALEIGH, N.C. - A local high school student who joined the NAACP complaint against the Wake County School Board says he feels minorities have been singled out. This comes after the Wake County School Board voted to institute community schools and to end busing to achieve socio-economic diversity. On Friday, a federal complaint accusing the Wake County School Board of discrimination was filed by the NAACP. 18-year-old Quinton White was one of 165 non-white students and three white students reassigned in April from Garner High to Southeast Raleigh High School. "We are in the south and it is no secret that racism still exists in the south and it has in the past... It's not about an individual. It's about a community, it is about a group, it is about people's futures," White said. The federal civil rights complaint filed by White, NAACP and teen youth group, NC HEAT, alleges "intentional discrimination" by the school board. However, Wake County School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta says such discrimination is a false claim. "If we wanted to we could not segregate.There are federal laws, state laws, court rulings, federal and local that prohibit it," Margiotta contested. Margiotta backed the school board's plans saying their intent with school reassignments is to focus on three things: proximity, stability for families and choice for families. He says the new reassignments are designed to fix a system that he calls an academic failure. "Just take a look at the graduation rates. The graduation rates for low income students are the lowest in North Carolina. That said, that's unacceptable. These are things we are going to try to correct," Margiotta said. Margiotta also says the complaint, along with any other legal actions, will not only cost taxpayers money but will also continue to divide the county.

Group Files Lawsuit Against Wake School Board By myNC.com WAKE COUNTY, N.C. - A group of Wake County citizens has filed a lawsuit against the Wake County School Board. The suit, which was filed Thursday morning, references a March 23 meeting where the Wake County School Board passed a resolution opposing the diversity policy in favor of so-called "neighborhood schools." The plaintiffs are being represented by the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, NC NAACP, UNC Center for Civil Rights, NC Justice Center and multiple private lawyers. According to the suit, the plaintiffs argue that the school board made no effort to make it possible for everyone to attend that diversity policy meeting, despite the overwhleming public interest. Many of the plaintiffs in the suit allege that they were barred from the meeting, violating state law and undermining the democratic process. "The school board has made it clear that they have an agenda to follow," said Woody Barlow in a written statement. Barlow is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and a junior at Enloe High School. "I feel cheated that they would skirt procedure just to have their way, and regardless of what people think of the policies of the board, everyone should feel threatened by their disregard of the democratic process." Manypeople were barred from attending due to limited space. Some news organizations offered to pay to move the meeting to a larger venue. But the offer came too last minute, and the school board then issued a ticket policy for the meeting. The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the actions taken on March 23 based on violations of the Open Meetings Law. "The suit does not ask for any money in compensatory damages. It is purely a good government lawsuit," said Irv Joyner said in a written statement. Joyner is an attorney with the NC NAACP. The plaintiffs also ask the court to order the school board to eliminate policies and practices adopted since the March 23 meeting that have restricted public access to the board. The suit asks the court to require new, clear and consistent procedures put in place to ensure that all members of the public who want to attend meetings are allowed to do so and to effectively participate in the process.

Lawsuit filed against Wake school board By T. Keung Hui (Raleigh) News & Observer Posted: Thursday, May. 06, 2010 RALEIGH — A group of Wake County residents filed a lawsuit this morning accusing the Wake County school board of violating state law by restricting public access to a meeting in which a resolution was passed calling for community schools. In the lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court, the residents say the school board violated the state Open Meetings Law by requiring people to get tickets to attend the meeting. During the meeting, the board passed by a 5-4 vote a resolution calling for the creation of community-based schools and the end of the district’s socioeconomic diversity policy. The lawsuit asks the court to throw out the vote. The citizens are represented by the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, NC NAACP, UNC Center for Civil Rights, NC Justice Center and multiple private lawyers. Citing security and crowding concerns, the school district had required people to get tickets for a seat in the board room. The overflow crowd at the meeting stretched into the hallways and outside the building. Three people were arrested at a protest. The lawsuit cites the offer by The News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting to pay for the cost of relcoating the meeting to a larger site. Citing logistical concerns, school board chairman Ron Margiotta turned down the request. The civil rights groups representing the people filing the lawsuit had also raised concerns that day about the ticket policy. keung.hui@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4534

Suit Challenges Diversity Vote BY T. KEUNG HUI AND THOMAS GOLDSMITH - Staff Writers RALEIGH -- In the first legal challenge for the Wake County school board majority and its vow to remake North Carolina's largest school district, opponents filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing that two votes against the diversity policy should be tossed out because state law was violated. The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, contends that the school board majority has stifled public participation by deliberately refusing to move recent board meetings to larger venues despite knowing there would be large crowds in attendance. This refusal violated the state's Open Public Meetings Law , the lawsuit says, so votes taken March 23 and Tuesday to ditch the diversity policy and replace it with a student assignment policy canted toward neighborhood schools should be declared void. Some of the civil rights groups providing legal services have also criticized ending efforts to balance the percentage of low-income students at individual schools to bolster overall academic achievement. Several of the plaintiffs are parents and students, many from magnet schools, who have spoken out against changing the diversity policy. "Whether or not you support the diversity plan, the school board wasn't doing what it was doing the way it was supposed to be doing it," said Andrew Snee, 15, a Broughton High School freshman and one of the plaintiffs. School board Chairman Ron Margiotta has toldsupporters they should expect a number of lawsuits from opponents. On Thursday, he said this lawsuit was merely a tactic by opponents to stop the board majority from fulfilling its campaign promises. "I think we bent over backwards to allow people to speak," Margiotta said. "If they want to just bring us into court, all this will do is take more money from the children of this county. Accept the wishes of the people of this county." A court hearing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday in Courtroom 5B in the Wake County Courthouse in downtown Raleigh. On March 23, the board voted 5-4 in favor of a resolution calling for the creation of community-based schools and discontinuation of socioeconomic diversity. On Tuesday, the board gave initial approval by a 4-3 vote to a revised student assignment policy that fleshes out the previous resolution. Early warning But the threat of legal action has been in the air since before the new board majority took office Dec. 1 after four Republican-backed candidates swept last fall's election. The Rev. William Barber, state president of the NAACP, warned at the time that if Wake County's new approach to assigning students wound up resegregating schools, the system could be subject to a lawsuit based on the state constitution's stipulation that all children are guaranteed a sound basic education. Margiotta cited the threatened NAACP suit against Wake as a justification for hiring Republican lawyer Tom Farr as interim special counsel. Margiotta said the board's majority members wanted to keep their options open in case they chose not to call on longtime board attorneys Tharrington Smith, whose founding partner Wade Smith is a former state Democratic Party chairman. The state NAACP is among the groups providing attorneys in the lawsuit. Other groups in the case include the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, UNC Center for Civil Rights, and the N.C. Justice Center. Orage Quarles III, publisher of The News & Observer, is a member of the board of directors of the N.C. Justice Center. The crowds at board meetings have sharply increased since December, escalating the often rancorous public opposition to the ruling majority. Starting with the March 23 meeting, the school system began requiring tickets for seats in the boardroom. Margiotta had cited concerns raised by the fire marshal for the change. But the lawsuit contends that the board created the ticket policy and chose not to move any of the meetings to a larger venue because it felt that "full public access" might "threaten their narrow majority and jeopardize" their plans. "They felt that hearing from so many people was slowing down the process and slowing down what they wanted to get done," said Woody Barlow, 17, an Enloe High School junior and one of the plaintiffs. The suit notes how the school board turned down the last-minute March 23 offer from The News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting to pay for relocating the meeting to the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. "This is about democracy and the way we make decisions in this country," said Swain Wood, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. The crowd at the March 23 meeting overflowed into the hallway and outside the building. Angry students began chanting, leading to the arrests of three protesters, none of whom are current Wake students. Tedesco shrugs School board member John Tedesco, a member of the majority, called the case a "nuisance complaint." Even if the board loses the case, he said the only thing that will happen is they'll reapprove the changes again. "All they're doing is taking money out of the classroom to pay for their lawsuit," Tedesco said. "It won't change the vote."

School Board Opponents Arrive Early For Meeting By Thomas Goldsmith - Staff writer RALEIGH -- Opponents of the Wake County school board's plans to end use of socioeconomic diversity in student assignment were already in place today before the beginning of a preliminary meeting now in progress. Several representatives of the grassroots nonprofit Great Schools in Wake were among those waiting in the lobby of the schools administration building on Wake Forest Road to receive tickets for the meeting. And several are in attendance at the meeting of the Committee of the Whole, which precedes the full board meeting at 3 p.m. The move to take diversity out of the assignment equation at the full board meeting has brought out not only several long-term supporters of the former diversity policy, but also plans by a social action group to demonstrate outside the building. The Coalition for Southern Justice, based in Durham, filed the necessary paperwork to stage the demonstration. Passage on second reading of a new assignment policy would represent a significant victory for the current board, which has four members who joined after posting wins in contentious elections last fall. It would end decades of Wake County's attempts to balance student populations in an effort to keep schools from having excessive concentrations of low-income or minority students. Supporters of the change have said the old policy merely hid the low academic performance of students in low-income and minority groups by sending them to schools that were high-achieving in aggregate. Update: As the Wake County School Board prepares to reverse its long-time diversity-based assignment plan, about 15 protesters are chanting against the change. Outside the schools administration building on Wake Forest Road, students from Broughton, Enloe and Cary high schools are carrying signs and shouting "Shut it down!" about the new assignment plan. The plan is up for its second reading later today. "We have demands for the school board," said Andrew Snee, 15, a Broughton High School freshman and one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the system that was dismissed Friday. The protesters want the board to put off consideration of the new assignment plan and rescind a policy under which people must get tickets to attend school board meetings. Elena Everett, an activist with from Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice, helped organize the protest.

From The text of the NC Open Meetings Law, which requires that organizations making policy in North Carolina conduct their business openly. The text of…

The left-wing Southern Coalition for Social Justice has put together a YouTube video of the March 23 protest at the Wake County school board meeting about the elimination of the diversity policy.

The video includes scenes of the chanting and the confrontation with school board chairman Ron Margiotta, which resulted in the arrests of three people who have a history of political activism. Also included are brief interviews with various young people, some of whom are magnet students and some who are not.

One young person said he supports the diversity policy because "I don't want to see Wakefield (High School) turned into the giant saltine school."

Another young person said she's getting involved because "I'm not going to let Dr. King and all the other civil rights leaders die in vain or the marches be in vain."

SCSJ believes that the Wake County school board's controversial decision to dismantle the county's nationally acclaimed diversity policy will fundamentally undermine educational opportunity for students of color, particularly low-income African Americans and Latinos. The system did not solve all problems: tracking and other factors still create defacto within-school segregation; as early as kindergarten, students are separated into tracks, such as Gifted and Talented, Honors, Special Needs and Remedial, which become virtually unchangeable for the rest of their academic careers, thus impacting the competitiveness of their college and scholarship applications. Wake County has a high number of suspensions and an achievement gap that correlates with race and socioeconomic status. However, dismantling the diversity policy will only further exacerbate these inequities and will have a disproportionate and negative impact on students that are already at risk. Because neighborhoods tend to be segregated, so do neighborhood schools. The inconvenience of bussing is more than a fair price to pay for the benefits of integration, enriched curricula, and real opportunities for all children.

RALEIGH -- Wake County's family-friendly, slightly nerdy image got a makeover this week, thanks to noisy accusations of resegregation and images of protester-toting police at school board meetings. From "The Today Show" to the Los Angeles Times to The Economist, media around the world have been spreading the tale of the Wake County school board's 5-4 decision Tuesday to ditch the 140,000-student system's policy of supporting economic diversity in favor of a neighborhood-based system. During the nine-hour-plus meeting, the divided board heard accusations of racism during a public comment period and loud chants from a group of hallway protesters. Three protesters were arrested. "Busing to end in Wake County, N.C. Goodbye, school diversity?" blared a headline in this week's issue of the Christian Science Monitor. Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said it's time for county commissioners, who provide a significant portion of the system's budget, to "step in and take control of this disorderly situation." Meeker, who is married to school board member Anne McLaurin, is among the supporters of the diversity policy who say the new school board majority is tarnishing Wake's national reputation. "It's putting Wake County in a very bad light and making people have second thoughts about coming here," Meeker said of the recent national attention. Outside agitators Supporters of the new board blame the negative publicity on outside agitators - one of the protest organizers was from Durham and two of the people arrested were from outside Wake County. The one Raleigh resident who was arrested has a lengthy history of arrests at protests on behalf of liberal causes. "You've got a lot of people who are paid political agitators who don't even live in Wake County," said Joey Stansbury, a local conservative blogger who supports the new board majority. "A lot of the people who are shouting about the issue aren't representative of the true desires of Wake County." Elena Everett, community media director with the left-leaning Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, said the protest of college and high school students was merited by the new board majority's swift action to set aside long-established Wake policies. "I think you've got to leave all options on the table when you are dealing with well organized and ideological people who don't listen to reason," said Everett, 29, who is the daughter-in-law of former Wake school board chairman John Gilbert. Off to jail, again Tuesday's arrest of Dante Strobino, 29, of Raleigh shows it's the fourth time he's been charged for trespassing, according to state court records. The records show he's also been arrested twice for resisting a police officer and once for breaking and entering. Strobino is a union organizer who has also been a youth activist with the Raleigh chapter of F.I.S.T. (Fight Imperialism Stand Together), an avowed socialist group. Strobino, a former N.C. State University student, declined comment Thursday. Court records also show that one of the arrested protesters, Duncan Edward Hardee, 21, of Asheville, has now been charged once for resisting a police officer, once for trespassing and once for indecent exposure. Hardee, a former student at Enloe High School in Raleigh, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Records show that Tuesday's arrest for resisting a police officer was the first for Rakhee Devasthali, 22, a UNC-Chapel Hill student from Fayetteville. Devasthali was among protesters who were nearly arrested after they started chanting their opposition to increased tuition and fees at a state legislative hearing earlier this month. Devasthali did not return calls or e-mails for comment Thursday. Images of the three being arrested have blazed across the country this week in numerous media outlets. "I'm proud that we have students getting involved," said school board member Kevin Hill, a member of the minority. "But the students have to realize there are limits." Margiotta keeps quiet School board chairman Ron Margiotta said he's turned down numerous national media requests for interviews. "I'm trying to let things calm down with all the national stuff going on," Margiotta said. Harvey Schmitt, president of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, said the level of coverage means recruiters will likely encounter questions about the schools from people or companies Wake would like to attract. "The reality is we still have a very strong system; that didn't change overnight," Schmitt said. "In terms of the impact that it's going to have, I think that over time we'll have a better appreciation for that."