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Excellent observation, NRG. I wholeheartedly agree. These Board members come across as arrogant, dismissive jackasses, and the rest of us look like a bunch of buffoons for having elected them.
Their attitudes are largely the result of the nonstop criticism they have recieved since being ELECTED on a PLATFORM which they are ADHERING TO.
Accusations of racism and re-segregation intentions completely aside, a STRONG case can be made that WCPSS was a business being run quite poorly for most of the past decade. There were glaring cost inefficiencies in the area of transportation and land aquisition/use plans.
Let me give you an example. On the first day of school at Highcroft Elementary in Fall 2003, the FIRST STOP the school bus made in my neighborhood had too many kids waiting for the bus to FIT on it. A second bus had to be sent. The 30 houses on my street contained 74 school age children that had moved in during the 14 months prior to that first day of school and WCPSS had NO FREAKING IDEA that those kids EXISTED.
Who was in charge of determining how many kids might show up that day? WCPSS. They were using a woefully inaccurate system to estimate potential student populations. They certainly were not doing ANY kind of headcount in areas of explosive growth, the very areas that contain the VOTERS who supported the 4 new members last fall. They were sitting around a table looking at maps while the moving vans rolled in daily. They were consumed with F&R percentages at the expense of just about every other issue facing them.
Those are the reasons I cast my vote for Tedesco, as did my African-American and Hispanic neighbors in our upscale Cary neighborhood.
The old board was doing a crappy job of handling growth. The old guard board members that remain still have their heads in the sand. Keith Sutton is a deer in the headlights. Anne McLaurin is a puppet of her husband who doesn't think we transplants "share their values".
Wake County would not be where it is today without us transplants.
What I value is a well run school district. WCPSS could NOT be described that way over the last decade.
What I value is a well run school district. WCPSS could NOT be described that way over the last decade.
I agree with you there, and I'm a graduate of WCPSS with nieces and nephews still in the system. I like the diversity policy in principle, but the implementation over past years has been atrocious. I only had brief interactions with the Office of Growth & Planning, and I've had more pleasant encounters with the DMV.
However, I think the lack of management was the problem, not the diversity policy. You can't convince me that people got redistricted every year because too many F&R students were moving into the district. The redistricting was due to poor forecasts of growth, not due to efforts to balance the system.
The reason I get progressively more scared of this board is that I don't seem them doing ANYTHING to improve the management situation. They aren't looking at the data themselves. They converted three schools from year-round to traditional without taking a single look at the cost implications or for that matter the wishes of the parents in those schools. They made the decision not to join the state association of school boards without looking at the implications for their insurance coverage. They seem more interested in speaking at political rallies than sitting back and looking at the data and trying to solve a very challenging problem.
And I can't imagine that they are having an easy time recruiting quality analysts to the Office of Growth & Planning in the middle of this firestorm.
This situation is as if some newcomers were to come to Pisa and decide the Leaning Tower needed to be straightened, started yelling "the problem is the foundation" and randomly pulling out bricks. Well, maybe the problem is the foundation and maybe it isn't, but the solution isn't just to yank it without thinking about what you are doing.
I'd give anything to see a board who said "the problem is management, and we're going to figure out a solution without a predetermined agenda." But I don't think we'll see that anytime soon.
Their attitudes are largely the result of the nonstop criticism they have recieved since being ELECTED on a PLATFORM which they are ADHERING TO.
While your comment about their attitudes may be true, it sill is not an acceptable excuse for an elected official. They all knew the conentious issues they were going to be working on (as you pointed out, they ran their election campaigns on those issues) and they need to handle themselves in a professional manner even when others around them may not.
I'll third that. I think you're giving yourself a little too much credit here. School life was actually pretty simple, easy, stable and GOOD before these areas of "explosive growth" came about.
That's one of the factors in many people's decision to move here in the first place!
While your comment about their attitudes may be true, it sill is not an acceptable excuse for an elected official. They all knew the conentious issues they were going to be working on (as you pointed out, they ran their election campaigns on those issues) and they need to handle themselves in a professional manner even when others around them may not.
You are right, and I won't defend some of their behaviors for a second.
I'll third that. I think you're giving yourself a little too much credit here. School life was actually pretty simple, easy, stable and GOOD before these areas of "explosive growth" came about.
That's one of the factors in many people's decision to move here in the first place!
I'm not trying to give myself any "credit". I'm sure school life here was better before the invasion.
I'll choose my words a little more carefully next time.
Since moving here I have said many times that part of me wishes I was born here and another part is glad that I had to endure NY life to appreciate all that is good about this area. I have never ONCE thought or said "this is the way they do it up North" with respect to anything here.
so much word to RDSLOTS & funkychicken's posts. most of those things are what complicate the entire issue -- the astronomical growth has not been dealth with appropriately by any school board, old or new. it's not really a surprise given that wake county in general has not done well with dealing with roads, infrstructure, & other issues that are hte result of crazy unanticipated growth. that doesn't mean the growth isn't good, it just means it hasn't been dealt with appropriately.
i fully recognize that because i am not currently a parent i have no living, breathing stakes in this WCPSS fiasco. however, at some point we hope to have children & we are current taxpayers who have friends with kids that we love dearly, as well as friends who are schoolteachers that are affected by the WCPSS issues, as well. let's not forget that other factors play into the mess as well -- a waning economy (locally, statewide, & nationally) & no child left behind policies that are affecting school standards. for the life of me, i cannot understand why it has generally been accepted that WCPSS's solution for the appalling number of dropouts & low skills-testing scores has been more about bussing those kids around to "even out" the scores rather than actually dealing with them. like some have mentioned, it seems our resources would be better sent to return to the neighborhood school system with the caveat that money is distributed percentage-wise where it is most needed to address the issues with low skills-testing & dropouts.
the issue is people growing up on both sides of the issue so that the parties discuss the actual issues -- identifying them, defining them, & addressing them -- rather than sniping at the other sides for political gain. throwing out terms like racism & resegregation only serves to further alienate the parties from discussing the issues & addressing them.
i only wish the media would quite trumping up the issues in a manner to sensationalize it when there are truly issues at hand that need to be addressed & not continued.
I echo what Iamishra said. I am a transplant and wouldn't even consider the notion that Wake Co is better because of us transplants. This infers that the county was backwards or inadequate before we came and "saved" them.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I came to this area in the 70's and I found a wonderful place, filled with amazingly polite and gentele people. They were curious about where I came from and always welcoming. I never heard them complain over the years as the area changed from a safe, kind place, to one of mega traffic, higher priced homes, less jobs, etc.. Yet all the while people looked down on them for talking slower, driving more carefully, not having good pizza, the right deli, the best grocery store, ad naueum.
The school system worked quietly and with dignity to educate its population. There was none of this tacky behavior and posturing. It would have been considered uncouth and undignified. There wasn't the issue of overcrowding and having to move children as a result of it. The school system was there, in the background, quietly getting on with it.
I think it's so easy for all of us to be critical of how the system was run. In recent years I have criticized the old board. But when you look at what they have had to deal with, they did the best they could. Honestly, just how could they forecast how many residents we'd have and get it exact? I've lived here long enough to know that a farm is a farm today when you drive by it. A yr later it could be a subdivision with 500 homes....how can they know this with such certainty as to forecast how many kids of what age there will be in WCPSS.
I know times have changed, there are different challenges. But if you move to an area that has suffered from ancillary growth issues for sometime, you have to accept that things won't be perfect. And expecting things to run as they did where you came from is unrealistic and naive.
Their attitudes are largely the result of the nonstop criticism they have recieved since being ELECTED on a PLATFORM which they are ADHERING TO.
Accusations of racism and re-segregation intentions completely aside, a STRONG case can be made that WCPSS was a business being run quite poorly for most of the past decade. There were glaring cost inefficiencies in the area of transportation and land aquisition/use plans.
Let me give you an example. On the first day of school at Highcroft Elementary in Fall 2003, the FIRST STOP the school bus made in my neighborhood had too many kids waiting for the bus to FIT on it. A second bus had to be sent. The 30 houses on my street contained 74 school age children that had moved in during the 14 months prior to that first day of school and WCPSS had NO FREAKING IDEA that those kids EXISTED.
Who was in charge of determining how many kids might show up that day? WCPSS. They were using a woefully inaccurate system to estimate potential student populations. They certainly were not doing ANY kind of headcount in areas of explosive growth, the very areas that contain the VOTERS who supported the 4 new members last fall. They were sitting around a table looking at maps while the moving vans rolled in daily. They were consumed with F&R percentages at the expense of just about every other issue facing them.
Those are the reasons I cast my vote for Tedesco, as did my African-American and Hispanic neighbors in our upscale Cary neighborhood.
The old board was doing a crappy job of handling growth. The old guard board members that remain still have their heads in the sand. Keith Sutton is a deer in the headlights. Anne McLaurin is a puppet of her husband who doesn't think we transplants "share their values".
Wake County would not be where it is today without us transplants.
What I value is a well run school district. WCPSS could NOT be described that way over the last decade.
I have read your post and come up with a couple of thoughts. First what sticks out in my mind is that you are Africa American and live in an upscale Cary neighborhood. I can really identify with that. What I sense is that yes your affluent community is integrated with regards to ethnicity but is it with regards to income? Isn't this all really about economic integration as the old board claimed? Perhaps part of the reason the reform got off track is a result of a few supporters saying don't sugar coat it this is about RACE and forced integration. Perhaps they were very wrong and a major reason why this has become what it is! Are you concerned about negative peer pressure for your kids? Is that from kids of a different economic or racial background? Perhaps you aren't worried about negative peer pressure. Just wondering!
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