School board finalizes reassignment changes for this fall

of GHS and SERHS thought of the change. IMO, on assignments, principals should provide direct input to the BOE.

As an aside, when I was watching the BOE meeting, I was taken aback by the lack of a pre-planned process. If this is the norm, it was slightly disturbing.

It has become crystal clear that the remaining status quo board members, Kevin "Sad Sack" Hill, Anne McLaurin-Meeker, Keith Sutton and Carolyn Morrison want to cling to the past and continue to support policies that have been proven failures and that the public has adamantly rejected. They are unwilling to cast a vote for even the most common sense, family-friendly reassignments as they demonstrated at the recent school board meeting. Every one of the increasingly disengaged status quo members voted against changes that would provide some relief for students and families in Wake County. (McLaurin-Meeker did approve one reassignment when it was noted that the students lived literally across the street from the school they wished to be reassigned to. This fact, did not convince Hill, Sutton or Morrision, however, as they voted against the students and parents in this situation too.)

Kevin Hill in particular should just resign now. He has no intention at all on working with the new board majority in any capacity or even in supporting the interests of his constituents, whom he continues to ignore. Hill offers nothing except an arrogant insistence in denying the results of recent elections and the new and better path WCPSS is taking. His antics are childlike; he reminds me of a spoiled child who is not getting his way and would rather sulk than contribute or compromise.

It is apparent that the minority BoE members have no the interest in the concerns of the students, parents and general public when making decisions. The social engineering, Dulaney-adoring, "healthy schools" acolytes -- Hill, McLaurin-Meeker, Sutton and Morrison -- bow to failed status quo principles and it will lead to their demise as relevant contributors to Wake County schools. So be it.

Buried in the last month of school board meetings was our long running petition to cancel the 2010-11 reassignment of our rising 9-10 grade students and keep them at Wakefield High School (WHS). Our segment of the meetings clearly demonstrated the differences in philosophies / agendas of the members on the School Board.... something that our community can only look to solve during the next election cycle.

Our District representative refused to support the cancellation of any reassignment (however logical the petitions were). Instead of discussing the pros/cons of our request (addl details below), he engaged in petty snipping at other board members. We lost our petition as it was never discussed by the Board.

Two Board members reminded our representative that this request had a HUGE petition behind it... our representative again refuses to engage. Although we had once again presented a petition with over 320+ signatures, data points (including Wakefield HS is our current assignment, Wakefield HS has capacity and Wakefield HS is less than 2 miles away), we were not provided due process by our BoE representative.

If our School Board representative will not engage with an HOA Board making a reasonable request for dialog on an issue for over a year (many unanswered emails, delivery of multiple petitions at BoE community meeting, etc), what opportunity is there to raise our concerns if the Board of Education must defer agenda items back to our "representative"?

We are looking for a path forward that will allow us to support the needs of the families we represent as a Board.

Background

 - the reassignment of our nodes to Heritage HS had come as a last minute addition to the three year plan (the community has rallied to protest at every opportunity to contest ever since)

- our Board of Directors performed the due diligence (preventing a handful of families from speaking for the entire community)

- we petitioned as a community and have kept our petition confined to what we believed the BoE could support

- illogical reassignment had not occurred

- there was capacity now for our students at WHS while the long term plan would be developed

- did not speak for either the school nodes being moved into the WHS from 10+ miles away or the nodes 8+ miles further southwest of our community who would be going over us to attend WHS

- no need for public hearings as only our nodes would be involved in the cancellation