There's a heated argument about what position the leadership of the African American community should take about Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh.

A message posted on the Coalition for Concerned Citizens for African American Children's listserv questions why school board vice chairman Keith Sutton and some other black leaders "support the opening of Walnut Creek, a segregated school." The writer also criticizes the recent school board decision to offer signing bonuses and performance pay for the school's staff.

It's unclear who's the author of the message. The person forwarded it to CCCAAC President Calla Wright for her to post on the listserv.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR CCCAAC'S RESPONSE TO DAN COLEMAN

Thursday night's community mass meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church dealt with the new Wake County student assignment plan, getting mediation for the school board protesters and assailing the conditions at Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, most the focus of the meeting led by the state NAACP and the Great Schools in Wake Coalition was on complaints about the assignment plan. The crowd of around 50 people, mainly supporters of the old diversity policy, were urged to contact school leaders to change the plan.

"If you let the plane fly in the air and you don’t make those course corrections that you feel need to be made in order to make it a more successful plan for all students so we have a fair and diverse and well-funded education for all students, then shame on us if we don’t advocate for the changes to make it happen," said Patty Williams of Great Schools in Wake.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Here's a recap of today's press conference in which speakers urged the Wake County school board and DA's office to use mediation instead of trials for the protestors arrested at board meetings in 2010.
 
Speakers said seeking mediation would heal the community, save taxpayer money and not tie up court dockets. You also had speakers from the Great Schools in Wake Coalition who both called for mediation while simultaneously defending the new Democratic board majority.

“I’m here to encourage the school board to take up mediation instead of ripping us apart,” said the Rev. Duane Beck, co-chair of Congregations for Social Justice and pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church.

The Democratic majority on the Wake County school board is now taking public criticism over rejecting mediation with the protesters who were arrested at board meetings in 2010.

The Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist Church, announced today that he will hold a press conference on Tuesday to voice dissatisfaction with the school board's action. Democratic board members have tried to argue their decision doesn't mean they want trials but prosecutors say it's causing them to seek them.

Johnson will call on the school board to now ask for mediation.

Both political parties have now officially weighed in with their endorsements for this fall's Wake County school board and municipal elections.

As expected, the Wake County Democratic Party announced Tuesday that it was endorsing Kevin Hill in District 3, Keith Sutton in District 4, Jim Martin in District 5, Christine Kushner in District 6 and Susan Evans in District 8.

In the announcement, the Democrats accused the Republican school board majority of having "made a number of empty promises to voters (in 2009) that they have not met."

How has the Wake County school system determined if a school is "healthy?"

David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for evaluation and research, gave the school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force a rundown on Thursday as he presented Wake's 2009-10 Healthy Schools Report.

The repot looks at academic performance, school populations, facilities, technology, climate, resources, staffing and programs at individual schools. The report is a carryover from the old days of the socioeconomic diversity policy.

UPDATE

For those who are having problems viewing the PDF links I put up, the ED task force has now posted them on its website. Click here to view the Healthy School Report. Click here to view the report with the staffing data.

Wake County school board members Ron Margiotta and John Tedesco and county commissioners Tony Gurley, Joe Bryan, Paul Coble and Betty Lou Ward are slated to attend a special showing tonight of the documentary "Waiting for Superman."

Those elected officials are among the nearly 200 people that Parents for Educational Freedom in N.C. says have agreed to attend tonight's free screening and post-film discussion. The Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association is partnering with PEFNC in sponsoring the screening at 6 p.m. at Regal North Hills Stadium 14 in Raleigh.

"The discussion will allow parents and community leaders — including members of the Wake County School Board and the Wake County Board of Commissioners — to share questions and ideas about local educational issues and solutions for reform," according to a PEFNC media advisory.

It would be an understatement to say that Wake County school board member John Tedesco and Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association President Dan Coleman faced a largely hostile crowd Thursday night.

As noted in today's article, both men faced sharp questions and were repeatedly interrupted by the crowd of around 100 people at the RWCA meeting. Coleman faced calls for a no confidence vote while Tedesco was accused of not being able to prove that the new community-based assignment plan would improve academics.

"You don't know me but I know you," said Montica Talmadge, an RWCA member, to Tedesco. "The program that you want to implement is crap."

Wake County school board member John Tedesco is potentially walking into a hostile crowd this evening.

Tedesco will be a guest speaker at tonight's meeting of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association. While RWCA President Dan Coleman has been supportive of Tedesco and critical of the old diversity policy, you can't necessarily say the same for the membership, which had endorsed Horace Tart last fall.

Tedesco will discuss the work of the student assignment committee and the economically disadvantaged student performance task force. He'll be joined  by the other guest speaker, school board member Keith Sutton, who will give his observations on Tedesco's remarks.

UPDATE

I'll post more in the morning. But in short, Coleman and Tedesco were both verbally beaten up by a largely hostile crowd.

Dan Coleman, president of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, is stepping up his pointed criticism of Wake County's magnet school program and the old diversity policy.

In a letter to the editor today, Coleman complains about how Southeast Raleigh students are bused out of magnet schools that "are loaded with extras to attract affluent families from other sections of the county." Instead of those extras, he says those Southeast Raleigh kids are attending "just plain old traditional schools in other sections of the county."

"The magnet school component of our diversity school assignment policy is nothing more than the repackaging of separate and unequal," Coleman writes. "All children should expect the same equal access to an extraordinary education."