Gang of Five wins 5-4 vote in favor of re-segregating schools

Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 9:56am

Setting the dials on their time machine back to the 1950's:

In a chaotic and conflict-filled meeting, Wake County's school board voted Tuesday night to kill the district's long-standing diversity policy and begin implementing neighborhood schools.

By a 5-4 vote, the board gave the first of two approvals needed to pass a resolution calling for abandoning busing for diversity, a policy that has won Wake national recognition and has been an important factor in student assignments for decades. The resolution calls for assigning students to schools in their communities.

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Not just Wake County

Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 10:52am.

Apparently the South, and North Carolina in particular, is devolving:

The issue has revived the term "segregation" and the brought the weight of history into recent school board meetings. Some parents and students around the state capital have implored the newly elected leaders to back away from their plan to drastically alter the diversity policy.

"Please preserve the New South. Don't take us back to the Old South," parent Robert Siegel told the school board.

Reversing the diversity rules would follow a cascade of similar shifts around the South, and particularly in North Carolina, which once was a model of desegregation. Now the state is increasingly starting to mirror an era many thought had past: On one side of the state, in the coastal town of Wilmington, an elementary school of several hundred students has just one who is black. On the other, in the banking hub of Charlotte, a primary school of similar size has just one student who is white.

In the military town of Goldsboro, starkly divided schools have led civil rights leaders to accuse local school officials of creating "an apartheid district."

That's assuming that we ever actually evolved, which I'm beginning to wonder about.

BJ Lawson Supports Art Pope's GOP School Board Racism?

Submitted by MadameJusticeWatch on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 5:20pm.

I applaud our newly-elected school board for their work to change our failed policies, and make the necessary improvements to offer every Wake County child a great neighborhood school.* BJ

http://www.lawsonforcongress.com/posts/great-neighborhood-schools-for-al...

Poor BJ

Submitted by James on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 5:50pm.

I'm surprised to see him in the clutch of teh baggers. Sad, really.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.

I'm not surprised at all

Submitted by Foxtrot (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 6:19pm.

B.J. Lawson (caution: Site leans right) is just another repug dedicated to that cause....nothing more.

Price is pretty solid in the 4th and should do just fine, IMO.

I agree about his poor chances

Submitted by Jake Gellar-Goad on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 6:42pm.

He's too socially conservative for this districts tastes. Lawson is anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-federal funding for education or for research in the research triangle, which is basically the whole district he is running in, and I'd be willing to bet he's against the new train infrastructure funds NC was awarded as well. He lost Orange County last time in particular on the order of 71.57%to 28.43%.

To really win in the 4th?

Submitted by MadameJusticeWatch on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 8:31pm.

One must take Durham County by massive numbers, since BJ has joined the Wake bigot GOP party in order to win in the primary. He has cooked his liberatarian roots to none and more none when Durham Demos paint him as a upscale racist without a sheet......Like James said.....Sad! The Ron Paul Children crusade movement has a lot to learn when it comes to playing hard ball in a large Sandlot that knows no political rules.....A recent example was in the Texas Governor Race where the Ron Paul candiate blew it by appearing on the Glenn Beck show and attack her own supporters thinking she was moving to the middle of the Texas Tea Party Republican voters.....

Uh Huh...yep

Submitted by Foxtrot (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 8:35pm.

That's what I'M talkin' about.

Ah, Plessy v. Ferguson lives again!!

Submitted by persondem on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 7:40pm.

The arc of history bends towards justice ... but it does take a detour every now and then.
Don't worry, it may take a decade or so, but the lawsuits are coming. Someone will call them on it and see their Plessy with a Brown and raise with a Swann.

Environmental Defense Fund

Cell phones will be to the 21st century what tobacco was to the 20th.

My guess is that the majority

Submitted by Huh on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 12:34am.

My guess is that the majority on the board were not living in NC in the days of segregation. They don't have a clue as to why so many people are so upset I don't wish anybodies children to have to take long bus rides to get to school but the twenty minutes they mention so often is nothing and the problems of exploding growth has more to do with the way students are moved around than anything else. The growth will still be there and neighborhood schools can only hold so many kids. It will be the haves and the have nots with flight out of the public schools when the upper middle class schools fill up and the next closest school is just down the way in the working class neighborhood. There will be rich schools in North Raleigh and Cary and poor schools in SERaleigh and Garner. Expect a real mess in some schools and parents wondering what all the fuss was about in the schools where everything seems just great. Expect high teacher turnover in the poor schools and everyone fighting to get an assignment in the elitist schools. I'm glad I don't teach in Wake Co.

I'm a moderate Democrat.