Is the Wake County school system undergoing "militarization" under the tenure of Superintendent Tony Tata?

That's a charge leveled in this Dec. 16 article by Jason Langberg and Lewis Pitts from the liberal Advocates for Children's Services. The article points to Tata's military career, the requirement of Junior ROTC for the new single-sex leadership academies and Wake's recent involvement in cybersecurity competitions.

The authors start by calling the Occupy Wall Street movement an "education justice movement." The piece charges that public education has "undergone a corporate coup" with the "mega-buck mafia’s buyout of public education."

A coalition of liberal groups is urging the Wake County school system to halt plans to open a pair of single-sex leadership academies next year.

In this memorandum sent Thursday to Wake Superintendent Tony Tata and school board members, the groups argue that approval of the academies was rushed through without enough input or review. The groups also oppose having single-sex schools and the requirement that students at the academies participate in the Junior ROTC program.

“Instead of spending precious funds on the proposed single-sex academies, spend them on improving and expanding alternative educational programs for struggling students,” says the memo.

The memo was signed by the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, Advocates for Children’s Services, the YWCA of the Greater Triangle, the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children, the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU and CHOICES — a group that’s criticized JROTC programs.

Is it case closed for any further need to review the school resource officer  program in Wake County's schools?

As noted in Saturday's article, Superintendent Tony Tata is giving at least partial credit for this year's drop in school crime on the presence of the SROs. Combined with the response from the survey of middle school and high school principals and assistant principals, Tata doesn't feel there's a need to make major changes.

"We’ve got a lot of things we can work on here in Wake County and I think that school resource officers is an area where we can work on the margin but I think these statistics show its effectiveness and I think the response from the principals and assistant principals show its effectiveness," Tata said at Friday's news conference.

Is Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta now singing a different tune on the issue of reviewing the school resource officer program?

In an interview Wednesday on the Bill LuMaye Show on WPTF, Margiotta was effusive in this praise of the school resource officer program as being necessary now that society has changed. He said he's hoping Superintendent Tony Tata's review will not result in any change of the program.

"I have some serious concerns with the fact that we're even considering making any changes," Margiotta said. "That's my personal feeling."

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

How much change, if any, will be made in the way school resource officers operate in Wake County schools?

As noted in today's article, Wake Superintendent Tony Tata is expected to report back in September to the school board on the survey they requested of the effectiveness of the SRO program. It's a prelude to efforts to revise this memorandum of understanding that governs how the SROs operate in the schools.

While a majority of the board asked for the survey and indicated they wanted to review the MOU, it's uncertain how far they're willing to go to change the agreement. It's also uncertain how much the various law enforcement enforcement agencies would be willing to change.

An overhaul of Wake County student discipline policies that largely eliminates zero-tolerance punishments could be adopted as soon as this week.

As noted in today's article, the Wake school board will vote Tuesday on a series of changes to the discipline policy with the biggest change being how suspensions would now be issued. School leaders expect the changes will reduce how often and how long students are suspended from school.

The changes appear to enjoy broad board support. Even critics of Wake's current discipline policies acknowledge it's a major change.

The ruling in the suspension case came the same day that Advocates for Children's Services issued a report looking at Wake County's 2009-10 student suspension numbers.

The report praised Wake for having reduced the number of suspensions in the last few years and for the changes being made this school year that are leading to even further reductions. But ACS also raised concerns that suspensions still disproportionately impact minority students.

Disparities in student discipline are one component of the NAACP complaint of Wake that's being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

Should Wake County middle schoos and high schools be patrolled by armed police officers?

As noted in today's article, Advocates for Children's Services, a project of legal Aid of N.C., issued a report Thursday saying Wake should reconsider paying local law enforcement agencies to provide school resource officers. In addition, the ACS wants to ban or at least limit the use of guns and Tasers by the SROs.

While not calling for a ban on the use of pepper spray, they do want limits on their usage as well.

Critics of the Wake County school system's student suspension policies are poised to get a win today.

School administrators will ask the school board today to change the definition of a long-term suspension to mean anything longer than 10 days to the rest of the school year. Currently, a long-term suspension means you're out for the rest of the school year with no exceptions.

Principals would have discretion, except where state law has a mandatory penalty, to determine whether to allow the student back before the end of the school year. Wake issues more than 1,000 long-term suspensions each school year.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

At a time when school diversity seems to be dividing the community and Wake County school board, it looks like reducing student suspensions is one thing that people can agree upon.

As noted in today's article, the school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force was receptive to most of the recommendations on Thursday for reducing the number and length of suspensions. Things such as reducing the length of long-term suspensions and finding more alternatives to suspensions got a favorable response.

“I think as a community we need to find the ties that bind us instead of those that separate us,” said school board member John Tedesco, chairman of the ED task force. “This is one of the ties that binds us.”

UPDATE

See end of post for links to Langberg's presentation and his report. Changed the link for the PDF for the presentation to reflect what was shown to the task force.