Diversity policy supporters take over reassignment public hearing

You make several points, I try to address each:

Point #1 - This is not about race, I never heard race mentioned one time when a group of parents we plotted to get the SED busing policy overturned through the ballot box. We, along with some cheerleading politicians outside of Raleigh met and organized over the past couple of years. The common thread is that people were tired of the past school board not listening to parents, promoting constant re-assignments due to growth, and the MYR conversions. The SED busing issue was causing a lot of the re-assignments. Most people who looked at it did not see that program as a success and it was causing a great deal of money being wasted and pain. BL- It was not worth it. The group of candidates that emerged had a plan and that plan included consideration of the poor's problems through a new approach. SED busing was to be transformed but not completely eliminated. I never remember race ever coming up in any meeting or any major political power broker getting involved. Most local mayors were at several of the meetings. This is more about stability and use of taxpayer money.

Point #2 Slavery is America's original sin, and each day the bewildering complications haunt us, stick to us, like a ghost dipped in glue. - Yes the wounds of slavery are slow to heal. In my opinion, they will never heal unless you forgive. At some point you will realize that you cannot blame a complete race for all of your problems. During the height of slavery it was mainly wealthy landowners that owned slaves, there were less than 1/2 million slave owners in the US, and not all of them were white. That is less than 15% of the white population. Not all white were for slavery and this country split apart because of it. Two million white solders fought against slavery (Less than 1 million for) and about 300,000 whites DIED to free the slaves. Almost as many whites died as they were slave owners to free them. The wound that was done to this country was severe, and most of the wealthy slave owners of the South were financially ruined. I could keep going on but blacks have been given the rights afforded to all Americans. They were also given education that many were kept from in the past. There was economic disparity, but that was true of other non-blacks also. Economic equality was never guaranteed by the Constitution though. Jim Crow was a different issue and there were pockets of prosperity in blacks during this time, look at Harlem prior to the Great Depression. What happened then? It is a lot more complicated than I have time for, but to this day I never understood why blacks like the Democrat Party. But what is fact is nobody living today in this country owned or promoted slavery and very, very few living today promoted segregation.

Issue #3  We have societal problems that conflict with the straightforward task of educating children. Every decision has not just family consequences but political and economic ones.  A: Yes we do, but SED busing has done nothing to improve those problems. Are graduation rates any better now?

Issue #4 The defeat in 1999 of the school bond started this ball rolling. That was a selfish act by Wake's citizens. The The taxpayers association should feel shame for that effort. But the old school board and old county commissioner boards should feel shame as well for not finding a better solution to growth... even if it required demanding more money from us. A: I wasn't here, so I won't comment on the Bond Issue. I do agree it was short sighted and should have been addressed much earlier. But what has this got to do with SED Busing? As far as asking for more money, that's fine but raising taxes during a recession of this magnitude might make the economy worse. And how are you going to convince people to raise more if they disagree with what the schools are doing? I think we do need to find ways to raise more funds, but it shouldn't be all property taxes especially with the current real estate market.

Issue #4 I believe there are some in our community who don't give two figs for our school system and don't like paying for poor children, seeing them as the result of bad decisions by their parents. - This is crap, I paid one fourth of my earned income last year in property taxes, that money went into the school system and was divided among all the schools. In addition my income taxes supplimented high poverty schools in this state. I gave over half my earning last year in taxes. And my elementary school went down the crapper, explain to me why I would want to give more. Obviously you want me to give until I really hurt. And you then turn around and criticize us, the ones who give the lions share of what you are getting free. That the truth, can you handle it?

So be it. But we all pay in the end; and now the whole country knows.... we just can't handle this, this truth 

The point is that the former diversity policy did not improve the performance of low income kids of any race.  The former diversity policy did not improve the graduation rate among low income children of any race, certainly not AA males.  That is the cold hard truth.  As altruistic as that policy may have been, it failed.  To me, there are many obvious reasons why it fail and I've chronicaled those opinions on this blog many times before.  We know that busing is not the answer and may even be part of the problem.  Eliminating busing, however, is almost as much of a non-solution as busing itself was.  The only benefit that not busing brings is an ability to see, admit and begin to address the real problems.  We need to start implementing more innovative solutions that are target to performance of lower income students (and any other income student who is having trouble).  Its true that busing could continue while these more innovative strategies are put in place but that's not reality.  Busing is a distraction that takes away from the efforts to implement different policies that may actually work.  The previous BOEs made diversity priority #1 and thought that everything else would fall into place as long as they did that.  They were nice people with good hearts but they were wrong.  We must make academic performance #1 and all other policies can be discussed after that.  

That's the cold hard truth diversity policy supports need to deal with.