Here's more about what was said at last week's OCR meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church.

Click here for an earlier post about the meeting. Most of the speakers and the crowd were opposed to the school board majority's elimination of the diversity policy.

The meeting kicked off with the Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist, getting laughs and applause from the crowd when he quipped that the church was "a very neutral site by the way." That was in response to the complaints from the school system about holding the meeting at the church.

Supporters of community schools had a much better turnout at Thursday's student reassignment hearing at Garner High School.

As noted in today's article, it was sharply different from Wednesday's hearing at Southeast Raleigh High when the biggest group was supporters of the Wake County's old diversity policy. It was a lot more evenly mixed Thursday.

Wake County Commissioner Phil Matthews set the tone as the first speaker.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Neil Riemann has harsh words to say about the proposal from last week's Wake County student assignment committee meeting to move thousands of Southeast Raleigh students to schools in their neighborhoods.

in a post Monday on his Wake Reassignment blog, Riemann crunched the demographics on the nodes listed and found that 76 percent of the students are black or Hispanic and 61 percent are receiving subsidized lunches. He also notes that the three community members who proposed the moves are white.

"While a few proposals address constituent desires by moving children within the representatives' school board districts, the bulk of the proposals serve to move minority children and children receiving lunch assistance out of these districts and into schools in Southeast Raleigh," Riemann writes.

Tune back to the blog around 3 p.m. to get details on the 2011-12 student reassignment plan for Wake County.

There are a lot of questions that are waiting to be answered today. How different will the plan be from the one adopted by the old school board in 2009?

How will staff go about implementing the new assignment policy? What impact  will proximity, stability and family choice have on the plan?

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is accusing the Wake County school board's student assignment committee of engaging in "bullying" by floating the proposed reassignment of thousands of Southeast Raleigh students.

In a press release today, GSIW charges the proposed reassignment of more than 6,000 students, many from low-income families in Southeast Raleigh, is a case of targeting families who have little sway or influence over the board "under the guise" of proximity.

GSIW contends that, at least in the case of David Williams' proposed reassignment of students out of East Garner Middle that it will actually result in the Southeast Raleigh kids going to a more distant school.

School board members Chris Malone and John Tedesco are trying put the blame on vice chairwoman Debra Goldman and the Democrats for the consequences of killing the zone plan.

As noted in today's article, Malone and Tedesco say the Southeast Raleigh moves proposed Tuesday are only logical given the Oct. 5 vote killing the zone plan. What's left they say now is implementing moves for next year based on proximity from the new assignment policy.

"We're going to turn the system into a true neighborhood system," Malone said. "By taking away the zones, they took away a lot of flexibility."

I'll go into more detail later, but the main thing out of today's Wake County school board student assignment committee is that staff was asked to look at moving thousands of Southeast Raleigh kids back to their neighborhood schools next year.

Committee members Tracey Noble, David William and Ann Rouleau came to today's meeting with a long list of changes, many of them involving reassigning Southeast Raleigh kids back home next year in line with the proximity guideline in the new student assignment policy.

Board member John Tedesco, chairman of the committee, cheered them on even as he pointed out that those were only suggestions at this point.

Wake County school board member John Tedesco's proposal for overhauling underperforming schools in conjunction with the new student assignment drew skepticism last week from the board minority and their reps on the student assignment committee.

Tedesco unveiled last week the idea of expecting schools to have at least a 70 percent proficiency rate on state exams regardless of their populations. He said the solution to improving academic achievement is to educate the students instead of distributing them around.

"We have to make sure we can get every kid to read regardless of their background," Tedesco said.

The first meeting of the Wake County school board's new student assignment committee has now been set for Thursday.

School board member John Tedesco, the committee chairman, said the meeting will focus on looking at a handful of node changes for the 2010-11 school year. This includes requests from Brier Creek families to be reassigned to the new Mills Park Middle School and to stay at Panther Creek High.

The meeting will take place as the final community members of the committee are being finalized. The membership so far represents a diverse mix of people, some of whom will be well known on the blog.

 SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR FINAL TWO COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CORRECTION: I HAD THE WRONG SUE KING LISTED. SEE INFO AT END OF POST.

With the draft reassignment plan less than a week away, there's interest in who's helping to put it all together.

That includes the members of the student assignment advisory committee. The members are Diana Bader, Alison Donnelly, Anne Sherron, David Williams, George Wait, Julie Stevens, Larry Dickens, Liz Parry and Roxie Cash.

Those names should be familiar to those who've been around here for a few years. Here's info on some of the members.