Local attorney Neil Riemann is disputing Wake County school board member John Tedesco's contentions that the old socioeconomic diversity policy led to white flight.

In a post Saturday on his Wake Reassignment blog, Riemann takes aim at Tedesco for comments he made in a column that ran earlier this month in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Tedesco was quoted as blaming the diversity policy for the district's F&R rate being triple the county's overall poverty rate and for doubling the percentage of people opting out of the district in the past 10 years.

"The affluent are not fleeing to private schools due to the diversity policy, assignment uncertainty, calendar changes, or anything else," Riemann writes. "No one is fleeing, because Wake County’s opt-out rate is essentially unchanged and has not doubled in ten years from 9% to 18%."

UPDATE

I forgot to mention Tuesday night that Tedesco had replied on Riemann's blog. Click here to view.

The forum Thursday at Lacy Elementary School's PTA meeting produced more than a few highlights.

You had, as previously noted, school board members Ron Margiotta and Deborah Prickett objecting to the use of student achievement in the Alves plan. You had a somewhat modified version of the presentation on the Alves plan from what was given last week to the Garner Chamber of Commerce.

You had Dana Cope questioning Tim Simmons about the Alves plan and objecting to board member Carolyn Morrison's vote this year against returning the Lacy nodes from Stough Elementary.

The Wake County school system's market share of school-age children in the county shrunk this past school year to 82.9 percent.

Newly figures released indicate that for the 2009-10 school year, the school system had 139,599 of the county's estimated 168,384 students. This 82.9 percent figure is down from 83.3 percent in 2008-09.

You can calculate the market share because new statewide home school figures were released today. The number of registered home schools has doubled statewide in the past decade to 43,316.

The diversity policy isn't the only difference separating Wake County school board members.

As noted in today's article, the board is also split about how to view charter schools, private schools and home schools. Members of the new board majority are more willing to embrace these educational alternatives even as they say they want to bring more families back into the school system.

“Honestly, I would like to see the public schools get involved with the charter schools and develop a better working relationship because of the way that they tend to be theme schools,” said school board chairman Ron Margiotta. “If we want to talk about it’s being competition, I welcome the competition.”

How much will the new Wake County school board majority do to help the Lacy Elementary parents who worked so hard to get them elected?

One of the reassignment plan changes being considered for the 2010-11 school year is to reverse the conversions that went into effect in August of Lacy Elementary students to Stough Elementary. Parents in those nodes raised and donated money for new board members and the Wake Schools Community Alliance during the campaign.

But reversing the conversions would mean going against board member Carolyn Morrison, whose district includes the nodes. It would also be against staff concerns about crowding at Lacy.

New Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta has a busy 24 months ahead of him before he retires.

As noted in today's article, Margiotta, 71, doesn't plan to run for another seat on the board when his term expires November 2011. He's not taking excuses that changes are too hard to make.

"I keep hearing people say it's too hard to change things," Margiotta said in the article. "That the district is too large to make changes. I don't accept that. We're going to put our noses to the grindstone."

The school district's market share dipped to 83.3 percent of the school age children in the county.

New state figures released today show that there were 3,771 home schools registered in Wake this past school year with an estimated enrollment of 7,571 students. In 2007-08, there were 3,548 registered home schools in Wake with an estimated enrollment of 7,059 students.

The new home-school data makes it possible to calculate Wake's new market share.

It looks like the recession wasn't enough to reduce enrollment in private schools in Wake and across the state.

New statewide figures today from the N.C. Division of Non-Public Education show a record 98,545 K-12 students are enrolled in private schools this year. That's up from 97,656 students the previous year.

Wake has 15,123 students in private schools, the second-highest total in the state behind the 19,733 students in Mecklenburg County. Wake had 14,696 students in private schools last year.

Now that we have the new homeschool data, we can estimate the school district's market share of students in the county.

It looks like Wake had 83.2 percent of the county's 161,076 schoolage students this past school year. It's a slight dip from 83.3 percent in 2006-07.

It's estimated nationally that 89 percent of students are educated in traditional public schools.