Accepting the Walnut Creek Elementary assignments

The Wake County school board showed a rare sense of unanimity as they spent the morning reviewing moves associated with Walnut Creek Elementary.

With the exception of the split vote on the calendar, the board unanimously agreed to all the moves filling Walnut Creek Elementary. Supporters of the old diversity policy agreed to reassign hundreds of students who had been going to schools in North Raleigh and Garner for diversity reasons.

“We’ve done some good things with assignment with proximity but we’ve created some challenges as well,” said school board member Keith Sutton.

Sutton said they need to focus on helping Walnut Creek academically, where more than half the students will be performing below grade level and will receive subsidized lunches.

Sutton had noted earlier in the meeting that some Walnut Creek families had attended the community engagement workshops to support being reassigned to the school.

School board member John Tedesco said that they wouldn't have had as many problems if they stuck with working on the zone plan. He said simply using a node system to send students closer to home will result in more high poverty and racially identifiable schools.

During various interviews with the media, Diana Bader, who is in the audience, accused school board members of purging low-income students from their districts to send them to Walnut Creek.