Advising on student assignment

With the draft reassignment plan less than a week away, there's interest in who's helping to put it all together.

That includes the members of the student assignment advisory committee. The members are Diana Bader, Alison Donnelly, Anne Sherron, David Williams, George Wait, Julie Stevens, Larry Dickens, Liz Parry and Roxie Cash.

Those names should be familiar to those who've been around here for a few years. Here's info on some of the members.

Bader, a former president of the Wake County PTA Council, is the de-facto head of the committee. She's been active in western Wake schools for many years.

Cash was a school board member for the North Raleigh seat now held by Kevin Hill from 1991 to 1999. She's been heavily involved in the PTSA at Millbrook High School.

Dickens is the head of the political arm of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association. The RWCA has been a long-time backer of the district's diversity efforts.

Parry has been an outspoken advocate of Wake's magnet program and diversity policy for many years. She is the director of N.C. State's RAMP-UP program, which tries to get K-12 students from under-represented groups to take advanced math courses.

Sherron, like many of the advisory committee members, has an extensive history of volunteering in the school system. She has been the District 6 Board Advisory Council chairwoman and a PTSA president of Sanderosn High.

Stevens is another long-time school volunteer who was president-elect of the Wake PTA Council. She was a former PTA president of Morrisville Elementary School

Wait used to be the long-time chairman of the District 8 Board Advisory Committee until Ron Margiotta deposed him. Wait had taken the unusual position of publcly attacking Margiotta at a meeting.

Wait was former school board member Bill Fletcher's campaign treasurer in 2005. After Fletcher lost, Wait crossed party lines to back Eleanor Goettee in the runoff.

Williams is a representative of Advocates for Greater Garner, a group of business and community leaders who complain that Wake's student assignment policies have left Garner's schools with an overly high percentage of low-income students.