Warning about Wake becoming "national villains"

agreed, it is hilarious that they think we will buy this nonsense. I worry that they will "phase in" changes so that nobody will really be able to see what the "after" picture looks like until it's too late and then the finger pointing will begin....John T will have run for another office and Ron will have retired and it will be the rest of us wondering how to fix it. Hopefully not but there is my worst prediction.

That's hardly a convincing argument.  It also doesn't say "For most of the past six years, Margiotta has the most northern accent of anybody on the board," even though that was undoubtably true.

LOL Oh my. Please, you are trying so hard to insult me that you make no sense at all. 

I don't harbor any ugly secrets or hidden agendas. I simply don't care about diversity one way or the other. It is not up to some government official to dictate what measures must be taken by others to orchestrate some ficticious proper mix of diversity. It is silly and wrong to expect people to jump through hoops like that.

Forget diversity and focus on academic performance and not placing unnecessary burdens on families; do that and effective solutions will be found.

But aren't you interested in bringing new people online? I don't understand what 'joining date' has to do with anything. Aren't there people out there who have not yet had the lightbulb turned on that we would hope to have helping in the future? Don't you anticipate that they will not agree with you on all points? Isn't there a better way to interact with those who genuinely want to work for a better solution? If performance is the focus, and you agree that diversity is an unrelated topic to performance, then isn't the diversity topic a distraction from the point on which we agree? Maybe, if we all focus on performance, through that agreement, we may come to some agreement about the diversity solution. If we are all focused on performance and we find that some aspect of the diversity solution in fact works, then it would be a stronger case to keep those aspects, wouldn't it? 

Food for thought.

BTW - my family has been free and clear of mandatory year round for two years now, before I even became involved in this. So, sorry, that's not the reason I'm in this. Again, neither one of us should assume they can paint the other one in a neat little corner.  

Oh Carson. I'm glad you've asked these questions because I actually think through this - if you hang with it - we can gain, if not agreement, at least some understanding. I hope others will chime in because I don't have all the detailed facts in front of me and don't have time right now to go and look them up. 

 " Why do you believe that the diversity policy must be ended to achieve any of the items you posted?"

Many of us see the basis of the diversity policy as one of this logic: Policy 6200 uses as its foundation the assumption that if children are low income they will not succeed unless they are not allowed to congregate together. If children are low income they will only succeed if they are 'saved' by the system which goes to unnatural means to 'cure' their situation. (for a 6 yr old child being on a bus at 6 in the morning driving far from Mom is unnatural. You can argue about how often this happens, but we've heard this real story many times. It happens and in varying degrees - often).  To my mind, the rejection of this child's community by the system and the very stance that their communities are not strong enough to help them (with help perhaps) robs these whole communities of the opportunity to see how strong they really are. It robs them of the responsibility and therefore the opportunity to see what they are actually capable of. With some more personal, one on one help, they may not stand up today but they may just stand up sooner than any of us think. 

I just think a lot of people are afraid. And then the fear gets them angry. They are afraid to have this conversation and give over to the conversation that they may not be 100% right. It builds the 'us vs them' mentality which is blind to the huge complexities of this problem. Us vs them assumes someone is absolutely right. No one is absolutely right. I'm know I'm not 100% right, but I also know that the diversity policy is not 100% right - its not working to help these children and is a technique that fractures and creates distracting chaos. It breaks relationships instead of building them from what should be the core around that child. That is where they will be comfortable. No child likes to be felt like they are an outsider. And this is NOT about the diversity of faces they may see. This is about their home and going far from home, from a child's point of view. If their parents are evolved enough to live in a diverse community then those are the people they will be comfortable with. If not, then so be it. It shouldn't be judged in order to educate the child. Those are the child's  'people', regardless of what color or tax bracket they are in. Children don't care about those things, they just want to love and be loved. They should not be burdened with the 'tax' of being little social pioneers for 'their own good'. Let's take that tax of being the social pioneers upon ourselves, the adults and go and try to help the children who need the most help where they need the most help - right in the hearts of their communities. Diversity is a wonderful community goal, and maybe by reaching out on this topic as ADULTS we can minimize fear and encourage diverse communities so our children grow up with that surrounding them. The schools are not the place to fix that. It puts too much tax on the kids. Schools are for education. 

Diversity policy and tracks of math -

My understanding is that there are two problems with this. Since the underlying fabric of the system is one of SES labelling, this view of skewed labelling permeates throughout. My understanding is that SES has somehow been used as a filter to determine which kids are remedial. If you are F&R, and are bused in, it is assumed you are remedial. Even if you are bright and test AG, you're in remedial math because its assumed that you won't get the help at home and those seats are limited, so it goes to kids believed to have potential to succeed. The system itself does not empower at-risk children that they can succeed. They get the message that they and 'their kind' need to be 'fixed'. That's a theft of hope. 

The other aspect of this is with regard to YR. Because of the need to divide up resources, because not all resources can be replicated on all tracks, some tracks get the 'good math' and some do not. So, if you are bright but labelled F&R by the system, you go in the 'remedial' chute and in practice these tracks are now in fact segregated. Same with Enloe. The students who came forward to extoll the honors classes at Enloe did not talk about the at-risk children at Enloe other than to point out how they - the honors students - got some good feelings from sitting next to them. The at-risk children at Enloe are sadly underrepresented at the graduation ceremonies. (getting back to that focus on PERFORMANCE that I'm so hopeful about starting with User). So, this means that the system may talk the talk about diversity, but when it comes to walking the walk it is OK for them to allow children to founder as long as it looks good at the school level. THAT is a big problem for me and highly hypocritical. 

The fact that we have allowed the media and special interest groups to boil this down, chew it up for us and spoon feed us their interpretation is unacceptable to say the least. These issues, as we have been saying for SOOOO long are so much more complex than the easy out "those rich parents are segregationists". That is so weak and uncourageous and dispicable on so many levels that it makes me want to choke. We need to do the brave thing and find the right people to talk about it with and come to understanding. We found that CCCAAC was not open to this. We also found that the CCCAAC does not have parent members that attend their meetings. I suspect the same will be true of Great Schools. 

I am hopeful, Carson, that, although I expect you will disagree with me on perhaps several points, that you will see how a thinking person would have a problem with a system that shuffles kids around for the sake of looking good for the media and for business, but when it comes down to the performance of real children - it looks the other way because it doesn't see what it wants to see. And oh dear, its so messy. 

Moms are good at cleaning up messes. I suggest we all grab a bucket and let those political actors rave on.