Vote Oct. 6 for Tedesco, Prickett, Goldman & Malone for School Board!

Election day is drawing near and we have the opportunity to make positive changes to the Wake County School Board. Four seats are up for election this year and there is a clear choice for each of those seats. If you are unsure if you live in one of the districts up for election, you can find out at www.sboe.state.nc.us. As a member of the Wake Schools Community Alliance, I am proud to endorse the following candidates:

District 1 (Wake Forest, Rolesville, Knightdale, Zebulon & Wendell): Chris Malone
Chris Malone is the only candidate in this 3 person race who has a real grasp of the issues. Malone supports community based schools but recognizes that they aren't a magic bullet to fix all of our system's problems. He wants to implement new approaches to reachstruggling students because merely busing them around hasn't worked. He supports expanding magnet opportunities and believes that the current discriminatory magnet selection process is wrong. He also believes that year round schools should be voluntary.

Malone's opponents are Debbie Vair and Rita Rakestraw. Although Vair agrees with Malone on many issues, her entrance into this race seems to be motivated mostly by her oppposition to the proposed high school on Forestville Road. Rakestraw doesn't seem to understand the issues of her district at all. She believes that there are no mandatory year round schools--that everybody has a traditional and a year round option and they go to the one they want. She is a supporter of the current diversity policy even though it has actually harmed Eastern Wake county. Eastern Wake has a high percentage of low income students yet WCPSS has stated many times that there's little they can do to lower the poverty percentages at Eastern Wake schools. The two solutions suggested by WCPSS so far have been to 1)wait for I-540 to bring higher income residential development to the area and 2)further reduce the number of magnet seats available to children in the area. Rakestraw is heavily supported by central Raleigh politicians and business leaders who are concerned with the health of central Raleigh schools and care little about Eastern Wake. Its easy to brag about the health of Wake County's 'urban' Raleigh schools if you keep the red-haired stepchild out of view. Rakestraw's support of the current diversity policy will further harm her district and will keep Eastern Wake 'left behind'.

District 2 (Garner, Fuquay-Varina): John Tedesco
John Tedesco is a dynamic man with fantastic ideas who can also bring those ideas to fruition. John grew up in poverty and changed schools frequently so he has a real understanding of what our lower income students need in order to achieve. He also works in a leadership role with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization and mentors at risk youth. John supports the community schools model which is advocated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Most importantly, John believes that low income students CAN achieve and that their families can be engaged.

Tedesco's opponents are Horace Tart, Carlene Lucas, and Cathy Truitt. Tart, the incumbent, is not troubled by the long distances traveled by many of our low income students. He believes that distance is not a factor in parental participation for low income families. They just won't participate no matter how close they are to a school so it doesn't matter how far we bus their children. This elitist attitude is also shared by Chuck Dulaney, director of Growth Managment for WCPSS. Instead of looking for ways to actually engage low income families and improve academic achievement, he's satisfied with just busing their kids around and wiping his hands clean of them. Low expectations for low income children are the norm for WCPSS and Tart will do nothing to change that. Lucas's controlled choice model is really just more of the same that we have now. Parents can apply for the school they want but acceptance is still based on low income percentages. When I first heard Truitt speak, I thought that if Tedesco wasn't in the race she'd be my pick. Since then, however, she has engaged in attack ads on her opponents that make me question what her primary motivation for seeking this office is.

District 7 (Northwest Raleigh and Morrisville): Deborah Prickett
Deborah Prickett is a Raleigh native and former teacher and school counselor who supports community based schools as a way to provide stability and increased parental involvement. Prickett supports voluntary year round, which is a big issue in this district which includes the Leesville schools. She is also in favor of getting the school board out of the land buying business so they can concentrate on actual education issues.

Prickett's opponent, Karen Simon is backed by the status quo and it shows. Much of what she says is just parroting what WCPSS's PR department says about itself. We're one of the top school systems so let's keep doing what we're doing, blah blah blah. Simon supports mandatory year round assignments and claims that they are necessary because of growth. Considering that Leesville ES is located right between 2 very underenrolled year round schools (Brier Creek & Sycamore Creek) and near 2 underenrolled traditional schools (York & Hilburn), I think she should rethink her answer. Simon would also make no changes to the magnet system as it currently exists. I guess that giving kids who live in the right neighborhoods and attend the right schools better access to the best WCPSS has to offer is ok with her.

District 9 (Cary): Debra Goldman
Debra Goldman understands that students need stable assignments in community schools in order to succeed. Like the other candidates I endorse, she favors placing resources where they are needed rather than just busing children around. Goldman also favors voluntary participation in year round schools and believes that WCPSS is too top heavy.

Goldman's opponent, Lois Nixon is clueless when she states that mandatory year round schools have saved the taxpayers $350 million dollars so far. Year round schools don't save any money unless they are at capacity and most of our newly built and converted yr schools aren't anywhere near capacity. She is even more clueless when she states as she did in one forum, that the children in her neighborhood have 27 different schools they get to choose from. She obviously doesn't understand how the magnet selection process works. Her neighborhood is assigned to Reedy Creek middle school so they actually have the least likely chance of getting into a magnet middle school. Nixon also touts the use of our schools as an 'economic tool' and how we don't want to "kill the goose that laid the golden egg". This is particularly disturbing to me and is a trend of all 4 candidates who are supported by the status quo.

Business leaders are very much behind the diversity policy not because it actually helps disdvantaged kids (it doesn't) but because it is good for business. It gives them bragging rights to say that all of the schools in the 'urban' core are good, but they ignore the fact that we still have those not so good schools. Since they are not in central Raleigh, however, it doesn't matter. They are invisible to companies looking to do business here. When the status quo candidates refer to the schools as economic tools it shows us that their number one priority isn't student achievement, it is about appearances. We all deserve better than that.

At-Large Elections

I'm sure you've all heard the talk of moving towards at-large elections. I support this move for two main reasons, accountability and equity. Currently our BOE members are only accountable to their own constituents for their decisions, even though their decisions impact all residents in the county. Further complicating matters is that while somebody may live in one district, their children may attend school in another district (sometimes even more than one other district) due to either base assignment or magnet attendance. Who truly represents the interests of those families?

While accountability is an issue in this matter, equity is by far the most important one. Because the district boundaries are drawn only every ten years with the census, Wake County's tremendous growth causes those districts to become extremely unbalanced before the next redistricting. According to information I found on the WCPSS website, "To comply with one-person, one-vote, no district should be more than five percent above or below the population of the ideal-size district." At that time, it was reported in the June 1, 2001 edition of 'School Connections' that "The board used data from the 2000 Census and advice from its legal staff to draw districts equal in population. The nine districts had to include between 66,723 and 73,249 voters to meet legal requirements."

I do not have access to population figures for each of our BOE districts, but we all have access to the voter registration figures for each district as well as the school and student numbers for each district. While it is not the same as having population numbers, we can still look at those figures to get an idea of how unbalanced the districts are.

First, the voter registration numbers:

If we use the same criteria that WCPSS used in 2001, the ideal district would have about 58,493 voters in it. Adding the 5% variance above or below that ideal number, then each district should have between 55,568 and 61,418 voters. We currently only have 1 district that falls within those criteria.

Now for a repeat of the student population numbers by district:

You can see that we have very unbalanced districts and I think its safe to say that this is due to the tremendous growth in the 'suburban' areas of the county. Even after the district boundaries are redrawn with the next census(2010-11), this same imbalance will occur by the time we redraw the boundaries again in 2020-11. The growth may occur in different areas of the county, but the imbalance will be there and citizens will not be properly represented. We can avoid this heavy imbalance by moving towards district seats that are voted on by all citizens. This will ensure that no areas of the county carry more pull than they should and more importantly, that some areas of the county are not underrepresented.

This is a bi-partisan issue that will ensure fairness for ALL citizens, whether they be Republican or Democrat, urban or rural, or live in 'old' Raleigh, North Raleigh, Apex, Zebulon, or Cary. Please write your NC Senate and House Reps, your mayor, city council members, and BOE rep in support of at-large elections.

Equal Representation Revisted

A while back I posted the numbers of students in each BOE district. The imbalance was startling. I ran the numbers for 2007-08 and not much has changed. 'County' districts are underrepresented while Cary and Raleigh 'city' districts are overrepresented again.

Equal Representation?

We all know that the WCPSS is split into 9 districts, with each electing a member of the Board of Education. Most of us assume that those districts are fairly drawn and that we are adequately represented. However, the districts are only redrawn after each major US Census--every 10 years. So with all of the 'explosive growth' we've experienced in Wake County since 2000, I wonder how well these districts are representing us now.

I haven't quite figured out exactly how they decide where to draw the district lines, but I did find some comments on the WCPSS website about how the lines are redrawn. From here

ATTORNEY BRIEFS BOARD ON REDISTRICTING
Attorney Michael Crowell talked to the Board of Education at its Monday (March 19) meeting about redistricting the Board of Education seats. Crowell told the Board after each federal census, election districts must be redrawn to meet the standard of one person, one vote. Crowell said that means the districts must not differ in population by more than ten percent. Crowell noted that there is no secret that population growth over the last ten years has shifted to the county's west. He said computer software will help advise on changes that need to be made. He offered a series of guidelines for use in redistricting based on the 1990 redistricting.
· To comply with one-person, one-vote, no district should be more than five percent above or below the population of the ideal-size district.
· Districts should not split precincts.
· Each district should retain their present configuration to the extent feasible.
· Districts should be reasonably compact.
· Outside Raleigh and Cary, incorporated municipalities should not be split.
· The area of concentrated African-American population centered in Southeast Raleigh should not be divided unnecessarily.
· To avoid questions about adequate representation, new boundaries should not be drawn to take incumbents out of their districts.
· In analyzing district population balance, political party registration should not be taken into account.
· Areas that expect the greatest population growth should have districts with the lowest population, and areas that expect lower growth should have districts with the greatest population.
Board chairman Bill Fletcher said the public would be offered the opportunity to comment on the guidelines in the public hearing at the April 2 board meeting.

I also found a brief follow up on how the districts were adjusted. From here

BOARD APPROVES REDISTRICTING
A new redistricting plan for Wake school board seats was approved by the Board of Education at its Tuesday night meeting (May 29). The board used data from the 2000 Census and advice from its legal staff to draw districts equal in population. The nine districts had to include between 66,723 and 73,249 voters to meet legal requirements. Growth in the past decade has occurred in western and Southwest Wake, and those two districts shrunk. Central and Southeast Raleigh had the least growth. Those districts grew. Fuquay-Varina and Willow Springs moved from District 8 in Southwest Wake to District 2, which now primarily consists of Garner. Some precincts in South Raleigh shifted from District 2 to District 4.

I was not able to find current population numbers for each district, but I did take a look at how many students are in each district. While its not an accurate look at district representation, I found it interesting nonetheless. If nothing else, I think it gives us an additional criteria to consider when redrawing the district lines in 2010: number of students in each district should be more equal. Eleanor Goattee represents less than half as many students as some of her colleagues, but her vote carries the same weight.