I'll go into more detail later but here's a very abbreviated recap of today's Great Schools in Wake Coalition forum.

Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon unloaded on the Wake County school board during his closing speech for the elimination of the diversity policy and other matters. Earlier, speakers presented national research on the benefits of diverse schools and the challenges of getting good teachers to work in high-poverty schools.

A good chunk of the rest of the forum was about the resegregation of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and the current turmoil of potential school closures.

Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon, former school board member Tom Oxholm and several university professors are among the speakers at next month's Great Schools in Wake Coalition fall forum.

Not surprisingly, the GSIW forum will support the group's position that maintaining socioeconomic diversity in student assignment in Wake County's schools would be a good thing. The title of the forum, "Costs and Consequences: What’s at Stake for Wake," sums up GSIW's perspective.

In a press advisory today, GSIW touts how the forum will "will allow citizens to learn more about the economic impact of Wake County School Board policy changes on the health and prosperity of our local economy."

Capitol Broadcasting pulled out all the stops on Tuesday when it unveiled its plan to convert the basements in two American Tobacco buildings into an office complex for startups.

The announcement, held at Bay 7 on the American Tobacco Campus, included an elevated stage made to look like the set of a talk show. Acting as host during the event was Michael Goodmon, Capitol's vice president of real estate and the son of CEO Jim Goodmon.

Michael Goodmon interviewed his father about the new space, which has been dubbed American Underground, as well as a panel of guests that included Durham Mayor Bill Bell and Rick Weddle, CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation.

He also gave introductions to a number of prepared videos that were shown on a large video screen.

One of those videos included a cartoon version of Jim Goodmon from the future. Asked in the video what the future was like, Goodmon said there were Plensa installments in every home.

The Plensa line could be viewed as a not so subtle dig at Raleigh officials.
 

You can probably say that not all Wake County school board members will choose to use the conservative Civitas Institute for their annual training requirements.

As noted in today's article, the school board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on designating Civitas as an approved provider of annual training for board members. State law requires school board members to get at least 12 hours of training a year.

School board chairman Ron Margiotta said he added it to the agenda because some board members want to take advantage of the new training program being started by Civitas. Margiotta said he wanted to avoid the situation in which the board members would take the classes but not be able to claim the credit.

Here's the "diversity matters" television spot being aired on WRAL by Capitol Broadcasting.

Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon has argued the "editorial message" is meant to promote the principle of diversity and not specifically the current diversity policy. Critics of the diversity policy disagree that the spot was as innocent as Goodmon maintains.

Look for another "editorial message" on school diversity to appear on WRAL soon.

As noted in today's article, Capitol Broadcasting began airing a television spot on Wednesday featuring high school students that touts why diversity matters in the Wake County school system. Jim Goodmon, the company's CEO, said soon will come a second spot with teachers discussing the value of diversity.

Despite the timing, Goodmon said he's not using the TV spots, called editorial messages, to lobby for keeping the current diversity policy. He said they're just a statement on the principle of diversity.

Capitol Broadcasting has hit the airwaves with an ad campaign touting the value of diversity in the Wake County school system.

The television ad, featuring several Wake students, touts why "diversity matters." It's the latest and most direct effort by Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon to influence the ongoing debate about the diversity policy in the Wake school system.

Capital Broadcasting owns several media outlets, including WRAL.

UPDATE

Click here for the online story.

Ann Denlinger, president of the Wake Education Partnership, is speaking out about Del Burns' resignation as Wake County schools superintendent and the upcoming search for his replacement.

Denlinger was interviewed by Chris Fitzsimon, executive director of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch, for this Sunday's broadcast of "News and Views." According to N.C. Policy Watch's Progressive Pulse blog, Denlinger says it’s clear to her that Burns “fell on his sword” to take a stand against those who hope to end the school system’s socioeconomic diversity policy.

You can watch online a preview of her interview where she talks about why Wake should pick an educator to be superintendent over a businessman.

The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, fired a heated attack on neighborhood schools and the new Wake County school board majority at an event honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At am interfaith breakfast in Durham on Monday, Barber argued that the educational research proves that maintaining socioconomically schools makes schools stronger. As a result, he said it's really about "class and race" with neighborhood school supporters wanting resegregation.

"What many mean by neighborhood schools is the school where the price of admission is the ability to pay a gigantic mortgage," Barber said. "What they want to do Governor is to take the money of this state and essentially create private schools paid for with tax dollars."

Art Pope is denying being the architect of the new Wake County school board majority and Thomas Farr is saying he advised against sending out controversial postcards in the 1990 U.S. Senate campaign.

As noted in today's article, Pope said "to say I was the architect was overstated.” He's referring to an Oct. 7 e-mail message from Wake GOP finance chair Marc Scruggs in which he tells school board member Ron Margiotta that they followed Pope's plan in the election.

Pope says he raised money for the school board candidates and gave advice to Wake GOP Chairman Claude Pope, his distant cousin. But he says that was all he did during the campaign.