URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2010/07/19_arrested_at_wake_county_school_board_meeting
Current Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:34:29 -0500
Correction: (July 21, 2010, 6:35 p.m.) Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Laurel Ashton’s year at UNC. The story has been changed to reflect this correction. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.
During a Wake County School Board meeting Tuesday, protests against an item that wasn’t even on the agenda became so tense that 19 people were arrested including three current and former UNC students.
Residents spoke out about the board’s recent decision to re-assign students based on neighborhood rather than the older policy that bused students across the county to achieve socioeconomic diversity.
People against the school board’s neighborhood schools policy, approved in May, argue that doing away with the diversity policy will effectively concentrate high-income and low-income children into separate schools, re-segregating the county’s schools.
About 1,000 students, teachers, parents and community members marched through the streets of downtown Raleigh Tuesday morningh to call attention to the policy.
Wake County high school graduate George Ramsay explained the benefits of diversity.
“Diversity is not a policy of convenience, it’s a policy of necessity,” he said.
N.C. NAACP President the Rev. William Barber, who was arrested for his protest at the last school board meeting, spoke to the crowd gathered on Fayetteville Street.
“Every child has the right to a constitutional, high-quality and diverse education,” Barber said.
Just before the 3 p.m. meeting, Barber was arrested outside the Wake County Public School System’s administration building on Wake Forest Road along with the Rev. Nancy Petty, senior pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church.
The board members watched the scene from a second-floor window.
School Board Vice Chairwoman Debra Goldman said there’s a big void in the information getting to the general public.
“I think it’s really sad that people are getting so angry,” Goldman said as she watched the arrests occur.At the board meeting, Chairman Ron Margiotta opened by addressing this concern.
Margiotta explained that the intention of the new assignment policy was to alleviate inefficiencies of the old assignment policy.
“This board does not intend to create high poverty or low-
performing schools” he said.
People from both sides attended the meeting, making the public comment session emotional.
Board member John Tedesco, who is part of the majority in favor of neighborhood schools, said people don’t understand the issue.
“Segregation was terrible,” he said. “We’re not doing that.”
Yevonne Brannon, leader of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, said she believes otherwise.
Like Brannon, many parents and students continue to argue that the new plan is de facto segregation, and they are not backing down.
Minutes before the end of public comment time, Camellia Lee, a 19-year-old from Chapel Hill, gave a spoken-word performance. Others joined in her chanting.
Lee and others were arrested when they refused to vacate the front of the room.
UNC junior Laurel Ashton, 2008 UNC graduate Marie Garlock and 2009 graduate Rob Stephens were arrested for second-degree trespassing and disorderly conduct.
“If people want to come from out of town and get arrested, OK,” Tedesco said. “I’m ready to get to work.”
After the arrests, students at the meeting joined arms. Some cried. The chants of protestors filled the streets and the board room:
“Forward ever, backwards never.”
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
What type of tuition increase would you support?
I will be there next time. My sister and 3 of her church members went today. We will not allow for you to undo what Martin Luther King has already accomplished. Inefficiencies, what a joke!
This is pure and simple. Segreation is morally wrong.past, present and future. The system may need work, but separate but equal will not work—not when it comes to controls the purse strings. Eveyone knows poor neighborhood schools will not get the funding they need, nor the teachers they need, nor will the students get the opportunities offered in wealthy neighborhoods to wealthy students.
It is absolutely ridiculous that this sort of thing would even be considered in this day and age. I hope you all keep fighting for diversity and that common sense wins in the end!
As a former WCPSS student of Enloe High School, I can tell you that while the new boards policy may not be perfect it is addressing an inconvient truth in the system, segregation may be gone but inequalities remain. At enloe for example, the diversity policy created the appearance of one school but the reality was different. On paper we were racially and socio-economically diverse but we ate on different sides of the cafeteria,took different classes, and had different goals in high school. Diversity allowed teachers to ignore these kids by averaging in others and its about time that stopped. Its time all kids in wake county learns, if community schools are the way so be it. We already went backwards, now let’s move forward past image and towards results.
I will be boycotting Wake County businesses until this obscenity is reversed. 50 years of painfully achieved racial progress cannot be rolled back without some form of response.
The protesters should have been protesting the 54% high school graduation rate by minority students. They are failing their own children.
A.E. Odoul said: I will be boycotting Wake County businesses until this obscenity is reversed. 50 years of painfully achieved racial progress cannot be rolled back without some form of response.
I understand your frustration, however, this does not at all relate to the issue at hand. Please reconsider your personal boycott – individual boycotts arehighly ineffective, economically and as demonstrations. Undoubtedly, this will only be more time and energy for you with little or no impact on the school board of Wake County.
Writing a letter to a representative, either US or state-level, would be a FAR better use of your time and that of others who might consider such a stance.
Ms. Clark, please learn the difference between a podium and a lecturn. Thanks.
Why is it the school’s fault that there is segregation? If you want diversity, address the the problem in the communities. Students should be able to go to their neighborhood school and receive a fair and equal education as any other school. If the school’s aren’t given an adequate education, then address that school. If you want diversity, then address the neighborhoods.
Where are you people at the other 51 weeks out of the year? You love this drama and attention, but where are you all when all the students sit with their race during lunch? Where are you when kindergarten teachers tries to teach their students about equality and tolerance, only to have it all reversed by their neighborhoods and parents? Where are you when black kids are typecast as dumb jocks? When Asian kids are supposed to be good at math? When white kids can’t be as fast as black students or jump as high? These problems don’t have overnight solutions. They require complex, comprehensive plans with many people helping to enact them (ironically, the people who were arrested have the passion and community position to devise and deploy such plans). Our communities need real vigilance, the kind that drives people to actively fight racism and injustice every day of the year, not just one or two, when it is convenient. Priests, rabbis, preachers, ministers, pastors, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers protest against this new policy. But, don’t go home satisfied. Don’t go about comparing yourself to Martin Luther King Jr. Don’t brag or get puffed up. You have only started. The real battle, the real struggle begins when you get home. When you must say to your followers and children, “Those board members mean well and are trying to do best by the students, but they are not considering some other factors that make their policy wrong,” instead of “Those board members are a bunch of ignorant racists.” When you must practice what you preach and must do it all without all the fanfare and media.
We are not created equal. We all have the same rights though. I see races hang together in every facet of society, and I bet this will continue no matter what. People decide to segregate themselves, not governments at this point in time.. Every race has been enslaved, every race has been segregated at some point, and every race has withdrawn to the comfort of their own in public and private settings . since there have been races. This is not a governmental issue-it is a people issue. Protesting against a meeting is silly- start a campaign that asks people to not divy up according to their color or origin. That is the way to start being “diversified”.
Thank you for your excellent coverage of this struggle. The resegregation of our public schools is a statewide and national issue. Wake County is a particularly important battlefield because it has a mostly-successful diversity policy, and because it is the 18th largest school system in the country.
i’ve never understood how these arrests equate to activism. if your goal is drawing attention to yourself, then it’s probably a good route. but if you actually want to have a seat at the table of discourse, it seems counterproductive to declare yourself unwilling to abide by the standards of civil discussion.
there’s a big difference between breaking an unjust law in protest and breaking laws to draw attention to your protest.
Where or not they Intend to create high poverty or low performing schools is not the point; it’s about the obvious consequences of the re-assignment. Get a Clue, Ron.
Unfortunately, in our educational system (as in every government system devised under the United States government), there have been many racist presumptions, suppositions, and reappointments. This does not make it okay to say that one more in the educational system won’t hurt. Or, that the problem in not in schools it’s in the communities. If we all held that belief, it would be the same as a someone saying: “well, the problem with environmental degradation and litter is a community problem, not mine.” In other words: why should I have to worry about it? Then why not just throw our litter everywhere, right? As long as it is not in the community that we currently reside in, who cares. Right? Is this not the same line of argument and logic as: well, it’s a community problem, not a school’s problem?
Is it any wonder that some community members do not trust a board that says: “we are going to community schools”? What does community schools mean? With our country’s history and issues, it means: racism, division, and haves over have nots. Several board members were quoted on CNN and WRAL saying that Raleigh is a “diverse community.” Raleigh is NOT a diverse community. If you looked at the whole population of Raleigh, sure. But each community is diverse? I doubt it. In fact, I know this is not the case. Or maybe, it is diverse for them. To them, diversity may mean: oh there is 1 black person in my neighborhood, so that makes it such a diverse place to live. For me, I like my communities and schools to be represenative of more than just one or two races and be as equally balanced economically and racially as well.
To say that making a community school is important, because you want every community to have their own school is fine. But, as we know in history of the United Stated Education system there has not been equality in every school even within the same school district, then or now. (And that is true in large school systems as well as small—look it up.) This schools, community schools, will create some schools that have many volunteers, extra benefits, etc, while others get nothing. Creating community schools in realtiy means dividing communities, not bringing them together to work together. At times, you have to create change if you really want a change.
Does it not seem suspect that some of the board members keep pushing this issue even though there has been a large outcry from the state and even national levels (check out CNN)? It is almost as though they are not even listening to the people and are still pushing their own agendas. One of the new members: Debra Goldman seemed awfully suspect on her interview on WRAL about the “confusion” of the community schools idea. She kept talking about how, as a mother herself, she has fought the school system on changes to her students assignment base and school and tried to keep her kids close to home. Changes that I might add, she said she was able to overturn. Did you know that it is also only about 3-4% of the county’s students that are continually moved from one school to another? It seems that Ms. Goldman has been one of those privledged mothers who have been moved several times and just wants, again, to push her own agenda. I bet that after her children are out of school, she plans to leave the school board.
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