diversity

Neighborhood schools sound pretty innocuous to many people. I have been asked by many well-meaning parents what is so bad about kids not having to get up so early to catch a bus halfway across the county in order to arrive at some magic number made up by statisticians. Where's the harm in having your kids go to school closer to home, they ask. Doesn't that make more sense?

America's ruling class, and the perils of revolution

George Orwell would be proud:

"Community schools can go hand-in-hand with diversity," Tedesco told his colleagues. The district's eventual attendance plan with a community-based focus will show that, he said. Some in the community have a "false understanding" about the matter, he said.

"We value stability for families. We value parental choice, and we value diversity," Tedesco said. "They don't have to be exclusive."

Keep practicing your Newspeak, John, and you'll eventually get the hang of it.

A couple of conservative Wake County School Board members had a new take on poverty and prosperity yesterday. John Tedesco declared after an assignment meeting:

"We're not talking about socioeconomic status anymore". "Once we pass the resolution, we won't be talking about it again"

Meanwhile Debra Goldman was less reserved on Twitter:


Of course it's easier to think about buying diamonds to celebrate the end of diversity when your husband skips paying $1,428.24 in Wake County taxes on your second property.

Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin announced his appointment of five new members to the N.C. Joint Underwriting Association and the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association, better known as the FAIR and Beach plans, respectively.

"I’m proud to announce the new appointees to the FAIR and Beach plan boards, and to bring a new level of diversity and expertise to each board,” said Commissioner Goodwin. “I’m confident that both the new and the existing board members will serve the citizens of North Carolina well and provide new perspective.”

Next Tuesday's Wake County School Board election promises to be a watershed event for race and poverty. I have followed the issue closely and today's Op Ed article in the Raleigh News&Observer by David Zonderman, "On school vote hangs our future", expresses what's at stake as capably as any observer.

Few recent school board elections have carried such historical and educational weight. Voters should remember the modern civil rights movement's struggles and realize that the fight for educational access and equity did not end with Brown v. Board of Education. That campaign for quality education continues today. In an increasingly diverse nation and an ever more complex world, all children need and deserve the best education possible in classrooms that reflect the rich and variegated human mosaic of America.

Several weeks ago I started actively searching for blogs written by women and minorities to help bring more diversity to the BlueNC blogosphere. This weekend Chris Bowers at MyDD wrote a couple of posts picking up on the diversity and blogs issue. This isn't new for Chris, but I'm glad to see him shed some light on the issue again.

One of the tactics I had planned to use to bring a greater variety of voices to BlueNC was to simply quote and link to blogs written by a diverse group of writers when I was actually writing my own blog posts. If I was writing about free trade, I planned to make an effort to find what other bloggers have to say. I planned to look beyond MyDD, Atrios, DKos and FireDogLake. This has been a lot tougher than you might think.

More below the fold......