[Edited on March 11, 2010 at 1:16 AM. Reason : nm]

3/11/2010 1:16:22 AM

Quote :

"From my understanding, a lot of people see getting Margiotta to resign as our last chance to stop the pending changes. We are literally grasping at straws. I trust you can appreciate that."

That as the case may be, unsubstantiated accusations of racism make your side about as credible as the birthers. I mean, if you're trying to do anything to discredit him, why not accuse him of raping babies and eating puppies alive as well?

Quote :

"The problem is that opponents of busing across the country haven't continued the fight for equality after the cessation of busing."

Which says nothing about whether busing is the best or even an appropriate way of going about improving the educational system. Of course, the other side of this argument is that the proponents of busing wouldn't vote to implement measures that could improve the situation (such as vouchers) because they fear the evil conservatives. Neither side in this whole thing is blameless. They're both playing with students like political poker chips and it's disgraceful, which is why I find myself in support of any policies that increase the control that parents and students have over their education.

Quote :

"We never had a chance. Neighborhood school candidates had professional campaign managers and unprecedented funding from conservative groups like the Pope foundation."

Doesn't matter, the total turnout was 5%. Assuming the vote was split 50/50 that means only 2.5% voted for these changes. Per your numbers 80% are satisfied with the system as is. 80% > 2.5% no matter how much funding the evil conservatives got.

3/11/2010 7:40:00 AM

Quote :

" RALEIGH -- Wake County school board members ignored open-meeting requirements in state law when they voted behind closed doors to place Superintendent Del Burns on administrative leave, a First Amendment expert said Wednesday. Raleigh attorney Hugh Stevens, who has represented The News & Observer and many other media outlets in open-meetings cases, said the vote Tuesday should have taken place in public after members discussed Burns' job status in closed session. But Ron Margiotta, the school board chairman, and Ann Majestic, the board's attorney, maintained that members acted within the law because no hiring or firing took place. Instead of holding a public vote, Margiotta read a prepared statement announcing the board's decision. Quantcast "In my view, they failed to follow the requirements of the law in the way the vote was taken," Stevens said. "It really comes down to whether the public body wants to be up front with the public or not." Despite Margiotta's instructions to board members not to reveal their votes, member Carolyn Morrison said Wednesday that the vote split 5-4 along the same lines seen in many actions since a new majority took over in December. Majestic, present at the meeting, said Wednesday that the voting followed the requirements of the law because Burns' employment wasn't ended. Though some groups had advocated firing Burns, he will be allowed to remain on paid administrative leave until his previously announced resignation date of June 30. "The law requires any decision to hire or fire to be done in open session," Majestic said. Margiotta said Majestic told board members it was not necessary to vote on Burns in public. "Closed sessions are something sacred," Margiotta said. "We don't reveal anything out of closed session." Stevens said that Majestic's reading of the law represented an "extremely crabbed and narrow view" of its purpose. In effect, the vote was over whether to fire Burns, he said. "You have a vote - clearly you're entitled to know who voted how," Stevens said. Margiotta said Wednesday that he did not want board members to reveal the divided vote to protect Burns' privacy and prevent more dissension in the community. The board's statement said that Burns had made "totally inappropriate" statements in media interviews after he announced his resignation Feb. 16. Burns had accused the board majority of engaging in political partisanship and criticized members' intention to end busing for socioeconomic diversity. "If we keep going, it will keep getting ugly," Margiotta said about revealing the details of the vote. Morrison said Wednesday that Burns' controversial statements were the sole reason behind the majority's decision to remove him from office. Margiotta's instructions not to talk about the vote didn't come until after board members left the closed session, she said. "I didn't take offense at it," Morrison said Wednesday. "[Margiotta] did say, 'Come on,' or 'I thought we weren't going to talk about that.'" Rarely outspoken at meetings, Morrison said she felt she had to speak out on Burns' behalf, partly because they have known each other since she hired him to work at Root Elementary School in 1976. "I felt very sad to lose someone of his caliber when we need all the stability we can get," Morrison said. The board majority has also faced complaints that it violated the open meetings law when members met as a group before being sworn into office on Dec. 1. Board members have argued that the law did not apply then because they weren't yet in office. Without discussing what was said behind closed doors, both Margiotta and JohnTedesco, a key member of the board majority, said removing Burns from the day-to-day control was the right decision. Efforts to reach Burns Wednesday did not succeed. 'This was a necessary step moving forward after he said he couldn't carry out the goals of the board," Tedesco said. Margiotta and Tedesco stressed the unanimous vote that installed Donna Hargens, Wake's chief academic officer, as acting superintendent of the state's largest school district. Margiotta said he hopes the board will approve an interim superintendent March 23. Also that day, he said the board will begin discussing the process for finding a permanent successor to Burns. "

3/11/2010 10:29:25 AM

Quote :

"their are plenty of us out here who still care about black students"

3/11/2010 2:17:24 PM

Quote :

"that a majority of the people could actually dislike something their politicians have or are doing and actually and honestly have voted them out."

Yeah, a 4.5% voter turnout, which they won a slim majority of, in 4 of the 9 districts. That's definitely a majority.

3/11/2010 6:43:19 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, a 4.5% voter turnout, which they won a slim majority of, in 4 of the 9 districts. That's definitely a majority."

It's a majority of the people who care enough about the issue to vote, which unfortunately is all that matters in a democracy. I have no sympathy one way or the other for people who didn't vote. Further as I already pointed out, that is likely the same "majority" with which these policies were implemented in the first place, so questioning the legitimacy on a 5% voter turn out is to question the legitimacy of pretty much every school board policy since people stopped voting.

Quote :

"voted behind closed doors to place Superintendent Del Burns on administrative leave"

This alone is reason enough for me to not want these clowns in power though. Regardless of how I feel about busing, their decision to remove the superintendent (whether officially or not) was a completely asinine decision. Now they need to waste money on finding someone to fill in in the interim, as well as pay him, and spend time and money finding a replacement, who will be that much harder to find now that they've made it clear they won't tolerate someone who doesn't tow the party line.

The appropriate response should have been "While we are disappointed that Superintendent Del Burns feels he can not work with us, and feels the need to air his grievances in in public forums, we still feel that he is the most qualified person for the job at this time, and will continue to make use of his services until the end of this term if he still feels the need to resign at that point. Until then we will examine all possible replacements and hope that he chooses to reconsider so that we may include him in the considerations."

In addition to saving the tax payers money, it would have made the transition smoother, and certainly wouldn't have made the board look like the spoiled 3 year olds that they're behaving like now.

3/11/2010 7:34:53 PM

I think the board is going to turn the other way in the next election. No one ever paid attention to the school board until now and this crowd is polarizing everything so much people are going to pay more attention.

3/11/2010 10:56:32 PM

Quote :

"I have no sympathy one way or the other for people who didn't vote."

Oh trust me, I don't either as I mentioned a few pages back. But to play the majority card is pretty weak considering the circumstances. As ^ said, with how polarizing they've been from the get go I'd be shocked if they stick around after 2011.

3/12/2010 1:53:17 AM

This thread are amazingly non-enlightening compared to how highly the posters think of their opinion.

Someone please: Justify to a layman why the school system should have busing.

Why should a school kid wake up early and ride a bus that drives past several schools to get their education? Occam's razor. If something looks like a misuse of public funds - it probably is.

Secondly, why should parents not be allowed to send their kids to the local school? To break up gangs up somewhere else? That doesn't make sense and violates plenty of laws of debates (like strawman). Why? Because you're not addressing the other options:

- Just break up the 'bad' schools. Send the kids somewhere else. Why bus EVERYONE horridly long distances when you could directly address the problem?
- Why should we have a network of buses sending kids to a network of schools? Where I come from, there was just one school. If you want to 'mix' kids, then stop this nonsense of sending one district to another district. Make a bigger school. Call the entire area a single district.

So tell me - why should we have this busing policy?

3/12/2010 2:29:32 PM

Quote :

"Why bus EVERYONE horridly long distances when you could directly address the problem?"

They don't bus everyone long distances. I know when I was in school my bus ride was never longer than 30 minutes at most, and I'm probably being generous since I don't remember how many stops were before mine.

I get the feeling most people don't even understand how busing has operated in Wake County for the past 20 or so years.

3/13/2010 1:02:33 AM

you are entirely right. Most people don't.

3/13/2010 9:10:46 AM

Busing is a give and take. I think it's clear that there are some downsides to busing, but I think when you look at the upsides, it becomes an essential part of the way WCPSS should run things. If there is another method that can get the best educational results for the most number of students in the county, then I'd be up for looking at it.

Again, I think it comes down to a me vs. us concept. If you are participating in a school system, then I think it's important to realize that many decisions are made to help everyone, and at some point, the individual will have to do a few things they don't love.

I'll give you an anecdote that I think shows a good comparison. It's a little long, so feel free to ignore it. Recently, my school system changed the filtering restrictions for teachers on what they can access while at school. Before this, teachers had limited access, and many websites were blocked altogether. In order to access anything beyond what students would be able to access (which is also very limited), teachers had to input a password into their browser, and even then many things were still inaccessible. Well, they recently changed it so that now it's pretty wide open. With a few exceptions, we can get on any web site. The only thing is that central office now logs the IP of every site you go to and tracks everything. Unfortunately, they can't do that on Macs, because of the way the software works, and so anyone in the system with a Mac (including teachers) is now limited to the most basic of access privileges, the student level. Now, almost everyone at the teacher level has PCs, and for all of them, this is a huge improvement, but for a small minority, it sucks. When I was discussing the new internet freedoms that we have with the woman in charge of making these decisions in the tech dept at central office, she said that all they have had is complaints since the system went into place. All these complaints came from the Mac people. See, the point is (sorry it's so long), that all the people who love things the way they are DON'T SAY ANYTHING. All the teachers who are on PCs and now have much more access to get what they need for the classroom don't call up central office and say, "Thanks, this is great!" The same thing is true for education. People who think everything is fine are going to do nothing, and then the very small percentage who have issues are going to bitch to holy hell. That's how people work.

3/13/2010 10:30:44 AM

While I agree that their might be some potential in the investigation of the current board's ideas for improving student performance and managing expenses, their execution of the ideas has been horribly botched and ridiculously rushed. It's painful to watch. Sigh.

3/13/2010 10:34:36 PM

there are 12 crayons in the box
that is their box of crayons
they're drawing with crayons

3/14/2010 12:14:55 PM

Quote :

"People who think everything is fine are going to do nothing, and then the very small percentage who have issues are going to bitch to holy hell. That's how people work."

So so so so so so true. That is something I've definitely learned in my current job. It's annoying as hell

Anyone think that the beating death of Taft is in any way related to the WCPSS hullabaloo?

3/14/2010 8:31:01 PM

Oh god I hope not. That would be some Murder at 1600 style intrigue.

3/15/2010 2:06:26 AM

It's kind of weird how the police have been so hush hush about everything though. Normally they love to blab that they think maybe sorta kinda the boyfriend might have done it.

3/15/2010 3:41:43 AM

I think it's because they don't want to screw up the investigation, and by providing information, it may cause suspects to change their behavior.

Don't worry, this one isn't going away until it's solved. The family offered 25k for info leading to an arrest, and anyone who is that serious is pushing the department pretty hard.

3/15/2010 12:50:16 PM

i'm not sure anyone in this thread is strongly in favor of the busing, though most think there is something wrong with the educational system as a whole. schools are not equal from neighborhood to neighborhood and this is a serious problem, which some people in power thought busing would solve but really did not. perhaps scratched the surface but there are still huge discrepancies even between schools less than 5 miles apart. back to the drawing board my friends!!

3/15/2010 5:46:54 PM

I finally picked up this book and checked it out:
http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Despair-American-City-Schools/dp/0674032942



It was a really interesting read on the history of our school system and why it's been held up as a model around the country.

3/15/2010 9:36:13 PM

Quote :

"i'm not sure anyone in this thread is strongly in favor of the busing, though most think there is something wrong with the educational system as a whole. schools are not equal from neighborhood to neighborhood and this is a serious problem, which some people in power thought busing would solve but really did not. perhaps scratched the surface but there are still huge discrepancies even between schools less than 5 miles apart. back to the drawing board my friends!!"

So we abandon busing and then......?

3/16/2010 8:58:08 AM

I realize that most people in this thread have no idea what they're arguing for or against, and the few who do know what they're talking about have no intention of communicating that to the rest of us.

3/16/2010 9:44:59 AM

What exactly is your question, mrfrog?

To say it briefly, what I am arguing for is as follows:

1. A diversity policy (or some sort of policy) which prevents large numbers of lower SES students from overwhelming schools. Busing is the way we do it now, and although it is not an ideal solution, in lieu of another alternative which solves the problem, returning to neighborhood schools is a bad idea for the county long term.

2. Parents realizing that the system is not designed for one child to receive the best possible care, rather that it is designed to create the best possible community.

3/16/2010 11:22:13 AM

COMMUNIty.
COMMUNIsm.

Just saying.

3/16/2010 11:30:17 AM

^^^^clearly some better alternative should be in place before abandoning the busing system. this board seems to think neighborhood schools is the best alternative. i don't really agree but none of them seems able to look at the heart of the matter. i can't myself come up with a great idea that would magically fix everything but in the mean time i think the diversity policy should remain in place.

i guess what i'm saying is all this talk of busing v. neighborhood schools is making my head spin. either way things are still going to be a mess and i need to see some other ideas being brought up. there is no quick fix here, which is what this new board is trying to do with basically dismantling everything the old board had in place. this a long term issue that needs researched ideas being put in place over a substantial period of time.

[Edited on March 16, 2010 at 11:41 AM. Reason : ]

3/16/2010 11:32:20 AM

Quote :

"1. A diversity policy (or some sort of policy) which prevents large numbers of lower SES students from overwhelming schools. Busing is the way we do it now, and although it is not an ideal solution, in lieu of another alternative which solves the problem, returning to neighborhood schools is a bad idea for the county long term. 2. Parents realizing that the system is not designed for one child to receive the best possible care, rather that it is designed to create the best possible community."

But according to what some people say, many students are not getting bused - many students go to their closest school. Honestly, do we understand the busing policy in the first place? After all, one element of the strategy was to create magnet "smart kid" schools in bad neighborhoods and incorporate the local kids. Ending the 'busing' policy for that school doesn't make any sense!

And is there a problem or not? Doesn't Wake have good schools? What is the book a few posts up about? Busing isn't the ideal solution of course, but is it a good solution? I don't think the attitude in the thread is that anti-busing. The attitude seems to be that it's a good school system about to fall to pieces.

Are we talking about 'fixing' something right now? Or is something about to get 'unfixed'? Or did the fix we already knew start to work less? What was the fix in the first place if it's not a potluck draw of who goes where?

I don't know!

3/16/2010 2:51:26 PM

Personally I think the system was working very well and was nationally recognized for achieving results that have been a far away goal for most other school systems.

Where things went haywire, from what I can tell, are two things.

1) More and more people were moving into Wake County from areas of the country with "neighborhood schools." They were upset that Wake County didn't use this system they were used to but failed to look at why Wake County does it the way we do. Essentially people moving away from areas with known bad schools and not considering our system was a way to combat the problems they left.

2) Wacky Wednesdays. I honestly believe if this system hadn't been put in place the school board election would have gone differently in October. I don't even really understand the point of the Wednesday early release and I'm sure I'm not the only voter who feels this way. Didn't schools already have departmental meetings before implementing this system? Why could these meetings not be held after classes were finished for the day?

3/16/2010 8:03:23 PM

Probably because you would have had teachers getting pretty upset, because it would require an additional hour or two commitment each week on top of any other already scheduled meetings and responsibilities (I don't know how you would do it with those who coach).

I know that may not seem like much, but the teacher workday is already mandated in its length and requirement.

Also, at the high school because of the individual schedules, there really are no times when all the teachers have planning together and can meet on topics. It creates an environment where every teacher is an island, instead of being part of a team. I see the benefits, and it's one of those situations where I think the kids may have been getting a better education as a result, but parents didn't give a shit because it inconvenienced them.

3/16/2010 8:11:40 PM

Parents have jobs too though. It's not realistic for most parents to be able to pick up their kid an hour earlier in the middle of the week every week.

The school I work at now they have monthly meetings on a Tuesday from basically 30 minutes after the last class finishes for about an hour. These involve the entire school. Then weekly each department schedules a meeting for their teachers to discuss what's going on. These meetings go on for 30 minutes to an hour depending on what's going on in school. For teachers that are club advisers it's not an issue because there is a "lead student" in each club that starts things going until the teacher can get to the club. If for some reason a teacher really can't be there they're given the minutes of meeting from the department head.

I don't really see why a similar system couldn't have been put into place.

3/16/2010 8:44:16 PM

I don't know either, since I work in Alamance, not Wake, but I figure for them to put something into place like that, they must have thought it was addressing the issue in a way that other meetings couldn't.

3/16/2010 9:17:17 PM

I remember reading once that one of the justifications for it was supposedly they first talked about having meetings on Fridays after school but that "the teachers wouldn't stay for a Friday meeting."

I would hope if they wanted to keep their job they'd stay

3/16/2010 9:40:04 PM

Well if the goal is to help, then I doubt it would work if you have a room full of pissed off staff.

3/16/2010 9:56:08 PM

PLT meetings just simply won't happen as often as they have this year. previously they'd been held about every 3 or 4 weeks, on a rotation with committee meetings and faculty meetings.

^^having meetings after school on fridays would see a huge increase in people taking those days off.


[Edited on March 16, 2010 at 10:38 PM. Reason : ]

3/16/2010 10:37:36 PM

If people are consistently taking Friday off because they have meetings they don't deserve their job.

Really how hard is it to stay for an extra 30 minutes any day of the week for a meeting? Sure I didn't like it when I first started working here, but I got over it and the benefits certainly outweigh the annoyance.

3/16/2010 11:10:02 PM

Come on, seriously. Teachers aren't saints. A lot of them are jackasses like everyone else in life. And even the ones who are great and work hard almost never stick around on a Friday. I would say that during the year about 40% of the time, I am the very last car in the parking lot. I have stayed til midnight or later repeatedly to get things done. I'm already going to be there, so it doesn't matter. But you know that the average teacher will not do anything significant in terms of planning and meeting at 4 pm on Friday.

Teachers are regular everyday people. You couldn't get any logical business in the country to schedule their best brainstorming sessions for Friday at 4 pm.

3/16/2010 11:30:01 PM

It doesn't need to be on a Friday. Like I said:

Quote :

"Really how hard is it to stay for an extra 30 minutes any day of the week for a meeting?"

Yes, plenty of teachers are jackasses. I work with a lot of them. That doesn't mean I think they should keep their jobs if they're not doing it the way their boss wants it done. Just like any other job out there.

3/16/2010 11:32:36 PM

Teachers should be judged on their performance? Well that's a game changer. If schools are going to be run like a business I should be paid as well as I perform.

3/17/2010 8:40:55 AM

Why do you think grade inflation has gotten so ridiculous in the States? Some teachers thinking if everyone in their class can get As and Bs it means they're performing well

3/17/2010 8:29:54 PM

If teachers are going to be judged on performance, you need a balanced set of process and outcome indicators that the teachers and schools themselves actually had a hand in creating. For businesses one main performance measure (profits) makes sense, but you can't run a public organization the same as a business without creating goal displacement. Maybe things like a high school gets more money from the state based on the percentage of its students that are employed or in college 1 year after high school. Parent satisfaction surveys might be worth considering. Things like this would balance out grade inflation because a kid who knows nothing and gets all A's isn't going to do so hot on his or her SATs or college application essay. Not being in education I can't say for sure what the best mix of goals would work best for public education, but I'm betting teachers could come up with better goals than tests alone.

In general public organizations perform better with targets, milestones, and goals that they themselves had a hand in setting where the goals include processes like number of clients being served, and outcomes likes changes in their clients lives and increased client satisfaction, based on all the research I've seen in my public management classes. But having only 1 goal always creates goal displacement. In the case of grades, you get grade inflation. One case we read about was bus service that only tied pay to the number of stops the bus driver made on his route on time, so he'd frequently stop at every stop, but without letting people on or off so that he could make the goal he was being measured on.

No measured goals, and you get pre-system goal displacement, where people do whatever they hell they want. Badly set goals that are tied to salary/budget/other incentives are only focused on processes or if you only have one goal set, you get system caused goal displacement where people screw everything else to meet that one goal. But a balanced set of goals that are tied to salary/budget/other incentives, including processes and outcomes, that the person being measured had a hand in creating, has proven results for making public organizations for efficient and effective. At least that is what I'm being taught every time I go to class.

3/18/2010 4:04:30 PM

Quote :

"One case we read about was bus service that only tied pay to the number of stops the bus driver made on his route on time, so he'd frequently stop at every stop, but without letting people on or off so that he could make the goal he was being measured on."

The mental image of the looks on riders' faces as this was happening made me laugh

3/18/2010 9:23:52 PM

To read in full go here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/23/403350/wake-school-board-expected-to.html

Quote :

"Three arrested, about 20 removed from controversial school board meeting RALEIGH -- At the Wake school board where a historic vote to end busing for diversity in the county is expected, police removed around 20 people, many of whom appeared to be in their teens and early 20s, who refused to quiet down after they started loudly chanting in the hallway outside the board meeting room. Dante Emmanuel Strobino, 28, of Raleigh was charged with second-degree trespassing, according to police reports, and transported to the Wake County Jail. Two more protesters were arrested by Raleigh police as they gathered in a circle and chanted outside the entrance to the school district’s central administration building."

Quote :

"The school board's new security measures, in force before this afternoon's meeting of the full board, include issuing tickets for admission to that meeting, limiting public comments to two minutes for each speaker and requiring early-arriving ticket holders to remain in the board building for hours to avoid forfeiting their tickets, the letter said. The letter also said the board provided minimal public notice of these policy changes "less than 24 hours prior to the beginning of these meetings, clearly in violation of the 48 hour good faith notice provision under state law.""

3/24/2010 12:07:30 PM

http://students.ncsu.edu/sgims/archive-84/p/dante-strobino-destrobi.html

3/24/2010 10:57:35 PM

http://www.wral.com/news/education/story/7285559/

tickets are bullshit. i'd probably create a scene too if i showed up to an open school board meeting and was denied entry

[Edited on March 25, 2010 at 9:51 PM. Reason : ]

3/25/2010 9:51:08 PM

^ I understand the reasoning but I agree it's bullshit. They should move it into a larger venue. Like maybe one of those school gyms our tax dollars have paid for

Quote :

"All neighborhood schools is going to do is accelerate the proliferation of gangs in certain schools."

I hadn't thought about that but I guess I could see that happening.

3/25/2010 10:21:03 PM

It got some national attention

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

3/26/2010 3:43:43 AM

And that video is a perfect example of why so many people think that the bussing policy is all about race, because whenever bussing is discussed, race is the only topic that comes up.

3/26/2010 8:07:07 AM

^I agree that there are many other both sides who believe race is a big part of this regardless of what the busing policy is actually based on. The N&O ran a similar story pointing out the national coverage this is garnering, and had many pics from the event (I shrunk some down below). But even without that aspect this new school board narrow majority hasn't been all that great, turning their back on a school construction project because it was politically expedient has raised over crowding concerns as they search for new sites and delay construction for years (unless there has been an update since I last read about that), and there is the whole lets consider paying a guy 100k of public money so we don't have to work with someone we disagree with for an extra 90 days thing.

Quote :

"Diversity policy turmoil may remake Wake's national image 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. Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/26/407414/diversity-policy-turmoil-may-remake.html#ixzz0jHmPiiYx"

Then again, maybe the N&O is portraying things as worse than they are. Margiotta (the now school board chairman pictured in the bottom right) helped organize a boycott of the News & Observer for having a photo of 2 gay men as a part of his anti-gay, anti-comprehensive sex ed, pro-family group, and I'm not sure boycotting is a good way to make friends with the media.

3/26/2010 8:50:42 AM

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/04/02/417740/students-shuffled-closer-to-home.html



So disgruntled parents got their kids sent back to Lacy, which is wanted they've been whining for.


And 100 largely less affluent kids got reassigned from Garner to Southeast with absolutely no notice and no chance for public comment--an unprecedented move in WCPSS history.

Tedesco's rationale? Those kids would have been moved later on under the new reassignment plan anyway so notifying parents and allowing them an opportunity to speak isn't necessary.

But if they were going to be moved later on anyway, why put pressure on staff and move them now? All the other initial reassignments have been to address specific groups of disgruntled parents who have campaigned to be sent back to their old schools...why toss in a random reassignment of 100 kids to a school they never attended?

I believe they are moving the less affluent kids in shifts with no notice so that when the big plan is put in action, the apparent effects will be less startling. They can act as if those 100 kids always went to Southeast and not Garner, and their numbers won't be included in the big plan. Essentially, move some of the kids now so that when they purge the others later, it will seem fifty percent less radical than it actually is.


And this shit is hilarious. The new school board said the old school board was unresponsive to parents and parents didn't get a say. So the new school board listens to affluent parents and gives them exactly the reassignments that they want. Then the new school board turns around and immediately reassigns less affluent kids with no notice and zero opportunity for parental input--a move that the old "unresponsive" school board never attempted...

Anybody surprised?

4/4/2010 12:21:05 AM

the pro-bussing people need to quickly gather aggregate test scores for the schools, and compare them to the scores in about 5 years. my guess is schools like southeast will quickly see a dip. can a school lose it's magnet status?

4/4/2010 1:05:48 AM

^Yes. Broughton lost its magnet status because it didn't deserve it in the first place.

The school board could do away with magnets entirely if they want. Or they could make a school a magnet just because politically powerful parents want their school to offer special programs and not because the school actually has any special demographic needs.

The school board can do whatever they want with the school system.


Here's a little bit more about the new school board members and their stances on the magnet program:
http://www.southwestwakenews.com/2010/02/10/4277/overhaul-could-strip-magnets-appeal.html

There are parents who are so happy that their kid goes to a magnet school, and they desperately want to protect that. And there are parents who are so pissed that their kid doesn't go to a magnet school or would have to go to a magnet school in order to take a certain class. The new school board members exploited the latter group heavily in their runs for office.

You should expect the entire magnet system to change dramatically in the coming years, not just Southeast.

4/4/2010 1:32:34 AM