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The unraveling of Wake County schools' income-based student assignment plan reached a sizzling fury last week with insults becoming the calling card. Among those leading the pack was school board chairman Ron Margiotta, who said of opponents at a Thursday meeting: "Here come the animals."
His behavior was shameful and unbecoming of a leader. But he was joined in bad behavior by speakers on both sides of a resolution to do away with a plan that has kept the state's largest school system diverse and academically strong. They jeered and heckled each other at a school board meeting Tuesday. Opponents of Margiotta and the board majority who've said they will go to a neighborhood-based assignment plan slung their own invectives. Responding to Margiotta's "animals" comment, state NAACP leader, The Rev. William Barber, raised the specter of the Mafia. "This is not a Mafia meeting," he said. Margiotta is of Italian descent.
The name-calling should stop. But the majority on the board would do well to listen to concerns about ditching Wake's income-based assignment plan. That change is a path pot-holed with huge problems. We in Charlotte know. We've traveled it for the past 10 years since a federal judge struck down race-based assignment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
An appeals court narrowed the ruling but agreed that the school system's three decades of court-ordered desegregation should be lifted. A race-neutral plan assigning students to schools close to their homes was instituted. The result: Many resegregated schools with the predictable challenges of low student performance, high teacher turnover and parent/student flight to somewhere else.
In 2008, about two-thirds of CMS's white students attended majority-white, generally high-performing schools in the suburbs. Urban schools, on the other hand, saw declines in white and more affluent students. About two-thirds of the black and Hispanic students attended schools where less than 25 percent of students are white in 2008.
To boost performance at high-poverty, high-minority schools, CMS has pumped in money for hefty signing bonuses to recruit stronger staff, as well as for smaller class sizes and other resources. A special "Achievement Zone" administrative and support team was established with a budget of an additional $3 million a year to bolster low-performing schools.
Gains have been made but it has been an extremely expensive proposition. And this year, those gains are in jeopardy as the school system considers budget cuts - increasing class size, shrinking bonus money - as officials plan for huge declines in state and local funding because of the depressed economy.
Wake County can count on facing these problems. Nationwide, school systems that have dismantled their diversity policies have been unable to avoid them.
As important, the lack of diversity will put Wake students (CMS students too) at a disadvantage in competing and working in a global marketplace that's getting more diverse. The benefits to students in learning to get along with people unlike them, and gaining from different points of views and cultures, are enormous.
We in Charlotte are making do with our decision but it has been costly and challenging. Wake should learn from our mistakes, and take a different path.
