The Wake County school board has put on hold the public hearings on the student assignment plan.
The decision was made tonight after a heated debate over whether to release the assignment maps and online address lookup of base assignments before the first hearing on Monday. Republican board members said the info should be released ahead of time while Democratic board members said doing so wouldn't help because comments would focus on individual assignments and not on the plan as a whole.
Democratic members said that they want to release the maps to parents to get input on that too, but not right now. The hearings will be rescheduled.
Board members from both sides did agree that a proposed Oct. 30 vote on the plan was too soon.
UPDATE
Board members said it would be rushing to hold the hearings next week when there's not enough detail on the plan.
In addition, don't look for the online address lookup feature to be up Friday.
One of the issues raised by Jonathan Blumberg, acting as board attorney tonight, is that the board needs to make the changes to the various policies before the new plan can be adopted. The board would need to make changes in the student assignment policy and the transfer policy.
Depending on how quickly they want to act, the next policy commitee meeting is on Tuesday, Sept. 25.
Comments
What a change...
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 22:40 — Bob_SconceRecall the original community engagement meetings when they were developing the choice plan: a number of sets of maps were made available on the website for people to comment on, then they held public hearings. And, in all that, GSIW was complaining about a 'lack of transparency.'
Now, there's only ONE set of maps and the GSIW-affiliated people don't even want to show THAT to the public.
Somehow, I didn't think there'd be quite so much overlap between the definitions of "transparency" and "hypocrisy"
see both sides
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 22:19 — turnerk1On the one hand, the thought of holding back the maps is maddening. Of course, I want, and should, see how this plan affects me before I comment. I know my own part of the county the best, and I know my own situation best so I can evaluate a plan most compentently on my own situation. But, I also think that the public hearings last time devolved too much into complaints about particular situations that had limited general applicability.
For any plan to work well two components must be in place. First, the general principles that should guide specific assignments need to be fully in place and understood by all involved so that decisions can be made fairly and policies applied equitably across the county. Secondly, the individual needs of different parts of this very big and diverse county need to be considered within the framework of the general parameters. Hopefully county planners are good at the first part, but parents are often good at pointing out the complexities of the second part. They know the quirks of individual parts of the county better than anyone. Two rounds of public comments is awfully time consuming and unwieldy, but might be the most helpful. I wonder if it would be possible to convene smaller focus groups of people to talk about the general parameters very soon, and then have larger public meetings after the school assignment look up is on line.
What level of idiocy does it take...
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:55 — woodstockWhat level of idiocy does it take to think parents are not going to want to know how a plan impacts their children and their families before making any judgements? The Democrat board members bi-weekly comedy show isn't so funny anymore... it appears they're taking us down a very scary and familiar path reminiscent of the Burns/Dulaney reign of terror.
We used to hear "your kids will go where we tell them to go." Who imagined it would get worse than that? Now Evans, Kushner, and Martin don't even want to do that... they want to keep it secret.
...
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:56 — SideburnsI eagerly await the GSIW press release demanding transparency.
Oh....wait...
Did they put out press
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:58 — jenmanDid they put out press releases during JT's SAC work? I remember talking to a couple of Dems/2009 board bashers who complained about that but I don't remember if GSIW put out anything.
I wasnt able to view the
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:23 — shank56I wasnt able to view the entire proceeding, but I thought I heard comments tht indicated no board members had seen the maps as well, and that they would like that courtesy before public release and comment.
Is that what I heard?
Board members said they
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:34 — KeungHui (author)Board members said they haven't seen the maps yet either.
Hmmm..
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:39 — local23sorry, I'm not buying that one, they have their own district to be concerned with and those parents will be talking to them about those maps/assignments.
How Ironic
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:19 — Solon77Romney/Ryan do not want to disclose the details of any major issue with the view of trust us on policy and we will work out the details after we are elected. Locally we have the Dems taking the same position and the Republicans wanting details released.
See they are not so different after all.
?
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 22:11 — starsonoursIt seems the Dem's prefer the transparency of a closed door and the "We have to pass it to see whats in it" approach. Somethings never change.
I am beyond belief
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:18 — local23'while Democratic board members said doing so wouldn't help because comments would focus on individual assignments...'
What did they think would happen at these meetings??? Individuals will speak about their kids assignments!!! Geez! Who is hiding what now?
No vote?
Tue, 09/18/2012 - 21:11 — FSandYOUWho would've guessed that!
How about a round of applause for yet another school board wanting to keep things from the public. Awesome!