Cash Michaels on critics questioning Ron Margiotta's agenda

Cash Michaels goes into Phyllis Bryson's resignation as Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta's campaign treasurer and writes that teachers and administrators aren't happy with the new math placement policy.

In an expanded online version posted today of an article in the latest issue of The Carolinian, Bryson tells Michaels that she resigned because she felt betrayed by Margiotta. She charges that Margiotta was undermining the 2009 re-election bid of her daughter, Cary Town Councilwoman Jennifer Robinson.

“I don’t know what his reasoning was. I still don’t know what his reasoning was,” Bryson says in the article, later adding that, “It was unethical for him to stab me in the back.”

Michaels writes that Bryson said her problem with Margiotta was not political. Apart from what she alleges he did to her daughter, Bryson said she still sees Margiotta as a “man of integrity with moral values” politically.

But Michaels writes that Bryson still sees Margiotta as “disloyal.”

“I thought he owed it to us to be a little bit more loyal,” Bryson says with, according to Michaels, an edge to her voice. “So not only was he underhanded by stabbing us in the back, but he denied it and pretended as if he didn’t do it.”

The rest of the article includes a number of the usual critics of the board majority. For instance school board member Kevin Hill tells Michaels that teachers and administrators are not happy with the proposed new math placement policy.

“There are claims of institutional bias and institutional prejudices towards certain groups of children, be they black or brown, that we try to hide them, and not give them our best,” Hill said in the article. "Of course we’re going to go ahead and go with this policy [because] we want to keep our jobs,”

“Of course we’re going to go ahead and go with this policy [because] we want to keep our jobs,” Hill says administrators have told him just in the past week. “What I’m hearing is that the morale is very low, and that principals and teachers are afraid to speak up. That’s not a good way to run a school system.”

“We need to thank our teachers for what they do everyday.”