Another round of "Moral Monday" protests are on tap today as the state NAACP continues its weekly protests at the General Assembly.

In a pair of articles Friday, the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, and Yvonne Brannon, head of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, cite the 2010 Wake County school board protests as being successful forerunners of the current protests.

In Friday's Associated Press article, Barber says doubters of the effectiveness of the current protests should look to what happened when they fought the student assignment efforts of the former Republican school board majority in Wake.

Will the tactics that the Rev. William Barber used against the Wake County school board have a similar impact on the North Carolina General Assembly?

Barber, president of the state NAACP, blocked the doors to the state Senate chambers last Monday, leading to his arrest along with 16 other activists. Barber says there will be more protests tonight at the General Assembly with the possibility of more arrests.

Barber is critical of the GOP legislative majority's support of Voter ID, not expanding Medicaid coverage, narrowing the eligibility for the state's pre-kindergarten program and a variety of other issues.

Barber's launched similar protests and acts of civil disobedience in 2010 against the former GOP school board majority in Wake. The protests were cited, conveniently in some cases by people who supported the actions, to argue during the 2011 elections that the board majority had made the district a source of national ridicule.

You've got a role reversal taking place about the 2011 redistricting map that were adopted by the Wake County school board.

The school board is expected to pass on April 23 a resolution endorsing the current election boundaries. It's one way of how the board is opposing Senate Bill 325, which would change when and how Wake school board members are elected.

What you're likely going to see, based on last week's board discussion, is that the resolution will be supported by board members who either voted against the 2011 map or who criticized it at the time. You'll probably see board members who voted for the map in 2011 not backing this new resolution.

The Wake County Taxpayers Association is urging AdvancED to do an on-site review of the complaint it filed against the Wake County school system.

WCTA says an onsite review is needed because the school system's Dec. 17 response letter to AdvancED was "elusive, misleading, and treats the concerns of many in this county with frivolity.”

To support the case for the site visit, the WCTA points to actions such as Keith Sutton's statements during the September closed-session firing of Superintendent Tata and the Nov. 28 yanking of the microphone from Deborah Prickett's hands by Susan Evans.

UPDATE

Click here to view the new WCTA letter to AdvancED and a press release.

How much does AdvancED plan to weigh the firing of former Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata when it reviews the complaint filed by the Wake County Taxpayers Association?

Mark Elgart, president of AdvancED, has been publicly critical of the firing, praising Tata's tenure as superintendent. But AdvancED didn't amend its list of questions to the school system to include Tata's firing after the WCTA incorporated it into its amended complaint.

Jennifer Oliver, a spokeswoman for AdvancED, said they didn't ask for Wake to respond to the firing because they will consider the amended complaint when they review all the documents. Tata's firing wasn't mentioned at all in Wake's response last week.

Unlike recent Wake County school board chairs, Keith Sutton steps into the job while juggling the duties of having a full-time day job and also being the parent of a school-age child.

As noted in today's article, it's been a long time since a school board chair has had to deal with those situations. Not since Susan Parry, who was chair from 2003 to 2005, has the chair been a K-12 parent at the same time.

It's also been awhile since the chair has had a full-time position. Chairs in recent years have tended to be retirees while Sutton is 42.

The Wake County student assignment fight is becoming part of the last-minute fight in the battle over state schools superintendent

As noted in today's article by Lynn Bonner, Wake County school board member John Tedesco sent out this controversial email Monday to supporters that includes some claims that incumbent June Atkinson says are false. The most contentious is Tedesco's charge, which Atkinson denies, that she's "using your public funds to pay groups like Rev. Barber's NAACP to work for her campaign."

But this post will focus more on the student assignment fight, including referencing back to the Oct. 15 candidate forum sponsored by WakeUP Wake County and the League of Women Voters of Wake County.

Last week's firing of Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata drew a variety of responses ranging from praise to condemnation.

For instance, Wake County Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Bryant called it "shameful, absolutely shameful." Two members of District 8 Board Advisory Council — Beth Shugg and Julea Danielson — resigned last week in protest of the firing.

But the leadership of the state NAACP, in a Wednesday press release, said they "commend the Wake County Board of Education for the poise and grace with which they handled the difficult issues raised by Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata's performance as Superintendent of the Wake County Public School System."

For all those who were upset that AdvancED acted on the complaint filed by the state NAACP, how do you feel about the group possibly acting on the allegations filed by the Wake County Taxpayers Association?

As noted in today's article, the WCTA filed a complaint Wednesday accusing the Wake County's Democratic school board majority of creating "a climate of fear and intimidation." The WCTA argues the board majority has undermined the progress that Wake was making to comply with AdvancED's earlier findings.

Wake County school board member Chris Malone said that if AdvancED doesn't act on the complaint that it will show the group is unfair.

Wake County school board member John Tedesco says the Republican majority "fired" Superintendent Del Burns during a campaign speech Saturday in his run for state schools superintendent.
 
"One of the things we did in Wake County that I was very proud of," Tedesco said Saturday around the 6:00 minute mark in a Salisbury speech recorded by The Rowan Free Press. "We had a chief bureaucratic administrator, kind of like the administrators you guys have all over the place, who was the rubber stamp kind of bureaucrat, liberal. a 40-year educator, in the classroom he knew how it was.

We fired him. We ousted him and brought in a general, General Tony Tata from the 82nd Airborne Division to lead that system right now."