The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is urging the Wake County school board to delay Tuesday's vote on the redistricting maps after finding what it called "errors" in the information released by attorney Kieran Shanahan.

In an e-mail message today to school board members, GSIW says there's a mismatch between the actual boundaries for two precincts that separate board districts and how they were publicly described by Shanahan.

Based on this analysis done by Tim Stallmann of the liberal Southern Coalition for Social Justice, GSIW says Shanahan incorrectly described the splits for 05-03 and 16-02 in the information provided on Wake's website before last week's public hearing.

The Wake County school system is formally putting the feds on notice that they're upset with the decision to hold Wednesday's community meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh.

In this letter today to federal officials, Wake school board attorney Ann Majestic argues that there is “no evidence that OCR made any attempts to ensure that the hearing would be held in a neutral location or that the event was widely publicized in the community.”

Majestic writes that Martin Street Baptist is “a decidedly non-neutral location,” citing how critics of the school board have frequently held events there.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Is it a sign of bias that federal civil rights investigators looking into Wake County's elimination of the diversity policy are holding Wednesday's community meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church?

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, the feds asked the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, one of the complainants, to find them a location. The site chosen by SCSJ has been one of the centers of opposition to ending the diversity policy.

“The Office of Civil Rights wanted to have a communitywide meeting,” said Anita Earls, SCSJ executive director. “They gave us the date and time and asked us to find a venue. The purpose is for them to listen to the experiences and the concerns of the community.”

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

It looks like a group of self-described anarchists is willing to pay high school students to work this summer to "fight the move to re-segregate public schools in Wake County."

Action for Community in Raleigh (ACRe) is holding a Young People's Community Organizing and Leadership Institute whose goal is "to save our schools, end racism and stop re-segregation." Participants who complete at least 130 hours of training and fieldwork this summer will receive a $600 award.

According to the application, participants will conduct video interviews with parents, students, residents, teachers and civil rights leaders and will create a series of informational videos about the history of the school system "that will underscore what is at stake for our communities."

Courtesy of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, protesters have a permit to demonstrate outside today's Wake County school board meeting.

Elena Everett, community media director of the left-wing, Durham-based SCSJ, filed the paperwork for the permit to demonstrate outside the school admin building on Wake Forest Road. The group had also done the paperwork for the March 2 protest.

The SCSJ has been heavily involved in the efforts to oppose the school board majority's efforts to end busing for socioeconomic diversity. In addition to helping with the March 2 protest, the group provided legal aid for the lawsuit that was dismissed Friday.

CORRECTED TO SAY THEY HAD ALSO FILED PAPERWORK FOR MARCH 2 PROTEST

Do speakers at Wake County school board meetings have the right to make personal attacks against board members or anyone else?

The school board is set to give initial approval Tuesday to a new policy that sets guidelines on what speakers can say. Several civil rights groups sent a letter today objecting to language in the policy that says "speakers are required to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the Board, staff, or other members of the public."

"Comments that go directly to an elected school board members' job performance are protected speech - not personal attacks..." according to the letter. "The new policy prohibiting 'personal attacks' will likely result in impermissible viewpoint discrimination."

UPDATE

SEE END OF POST FOR LINK TO NEW POLICY 

The left-wing Southern Coalition for Social Justice has put together a YouTube video of the March 23 protest at the Wake County school board meeting about the elimination of the diversity policy.

The video includes scenes of the chanting and the confrontation with school board chairman Ron Margiotta, which resulted in the arrests of three people who have a history of political activism. Also included are brief interviews with various young people, some of whom are magnet students and some who are not.

With the blessing of the state NAACP, around 20 people protested tonight at N.C. State University about what they called conservative businessman Art Pope's "privatization of public schools."

The protesters painted Pope as an enemy of public education. They bashed the Pope and his Pope Family Foundation as having put the new school board majority in power and for criticizing university programs such as multicultural studies.

"Pope, hands off our public education," chanted the protesters, consisting of N.C. State students, high school students and others who've joined the efforts to back Wake's diversity policy. "We don't want his resegregation."