In the photo above, police officers try to quell chanters shouting, "No resegregation in our town. Shut it down!" during a meeting of the Wake County School Board Tuesday, March 23.
I was getting ready for work this morning, and while watching the Today show (my morning ritual) a familiar conversation came across the news. They were discussing busing, and the fact that the school board in Wake County, North Carolina voted 5-to-4, this week to abandon its income-diversity goal in favor of a return to neighborhood schools. They want to develop attendance zones closer to students' homes. Advocates say the new plan in development will spare children long bus rides, while opponents claim it will lead to racial "resegregation" and more concentrated poverty in certain schools.
This decision to reverse their income-based integration plan, which had been serving as a national model for a decade as school systems sough alternatives to traditional racial-balancing plans, and an active attempt to bring about diversity.
I did some research and found another article from 2002, about opinions on Wake County bussing that said many parents were choosing magnet or year-round schools to gain stability in Wake County's rapidly growing schools, but parents said they were frustrated by forced moves that claim to imporve diversity and test scores.
"The longer we go with the reassignment plan and the pain it creates without understanding what the gain is, you're going to find an erosion of support for the public school system," said Harvey Schmidtt, director of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. "A very healthy school system works very well in recruiting new companies and new people into the community."
In an article I found in the Christian Science Observer written this week, the head of the state NAACP, William Barber, was quoted writing in a blog that “when children are packed into the most underfunded, most segregated, most high-poverty schools, it is nothing but a form of institutionalized child abuse.”
Below is a link I found from CBS news on the issue. I will try and keep an eye out from the video clip I saw on the Today show this morning, because I think you all would enjoy it. Just something to think about, that is taking place in our own backyard.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/24/national/main6328396.shtml
*I keep trying to make it a hyperlink, however it will never show up for me, any suggestions?
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