News that makes you angry

[OnyxCougar]

As someone who lives a couple counties over from Wake County (I don't have a dog in that race), but as someone who pays NC taxes, I think that the argument about the tea-party is moot. I don't really care if the school board is Republican, Democrat, or Socialist. It simply doesn't matter.

What DOES matter is that Tedesco and the board want to bring back neighborhood (community) school zones. So your kids go to school with their friends in the neighborhood. Which I think is a great idea.

Historically, the desegregation laws were a good thing, and coming from a good place, namely a desire to integrate kids. I'm down with that. But it's been 60 years, and while I'm not naive enough to believe that racism is dead, I'm also of the firm belief that we should NOT be busing kids 90 minutes each way to a different middle school BASED ON RACE.

So a couple of years ago, they changed the standard from Ethnicity to "socio-economic" factors. They stated a target of no more than 40% of student on free/reduced lunch (FRL) per school. So, see now they could say that it's not RACIAL, it's ECONOMICS. Although everyone knew that the majority of the FRL kids just happened to be black.Gotta love political correctness. But that still left the problem of bussing POOR kids 90 minutes each way to school.

So Tedesco is coming at it like this: neighborhood zoning would provide a savings (currently, WFSD pays quite a few million in transportation (fuel, maintenance, driver salaries for all those 90 minute each way trips, etc).) So lets stop bussing kids and put that savings into the underperforming schools AND build the 12 new schools that we have budgeted into areas that..wait for it...need more schools.

I think it's a perfectly sound, logical way to do it.

My catholic, conservative co-worker, however, feels that "community" zoning is going BACK to the bad old days of segregation. Everyone knows that people who live in a certain area tend to be a certain ethnicity, whether that be a socio-economic reason, a cultural reason, or a racist reason. He thinks that if a 5 block square area for example, is 98% black in makeup, then they SHOULD bus kids out and "bring in" white kids, hispanic kids and asian kids to make up a more racially diverse school.

I think that's bullshit. There is a really good middle school out in my county, and I specifically moved out to that "zone" because I wanted my kid to go to that school. And he did. But if my coworker had his way, my kid would have been bussed to the shit school up county simply based on the fact that he's white. That's racism to me, pure and simple.

Let's spend our energy, focus, and money on making ALL the school in the district equally awesome, instead of spending that money on transporting a white kid 90 minutes to a "shitty school" so a black kid can spend the same 90 minutes on a bus going to a "great school". Make them all great schools.

[Lamplighter]

Onyx, I hope I understand what you're saying and take your post as it was intended,
and I'm very sympathetic to arguments about "90 min of busing".
So I'm really wanting to not say anything that's taken an attack upon you or your post.

And I agree with the business about the PC of race vs class.
It is very Non-PC for someone or something to be explicitly called "racist".
Hence "class" and "diversity" are becoming the PC language of the day.

The problem of "de jur vs de facto" has been the focus over the past 60 years
via ridding the nation of the "de jur".
But we have found no real solution for the "de facto"
The nuts and bolts are well described in your post:

Historically, the desegregation laws were a good thing,
and coming from a good place, namely a desire to integrate kids.
I'm down with that. But it's been 60 years, and while I'm not naiv
enough to believe that racism is dead, I'm also of the firm belief that
we should NOT be busing kids 90 minutes each way to a different
middle school BASED ON RACE.

Do we, as a nation, still have "namely a desire to integrate kids"
Is a good thing or not. Why do we believe that ?
How can we arrange for kids to go to school with and play with their friends.

That's the irony and anger in the two situations of my original post, Ohio and North Carolina.

[OnyxCougar]

Hey Lamp!

Originally Posted by lamp

Do we, as a nation, still have "namely a desire to integrate kids"
Is a good thing or not. Why do we believe that ?
How can we arrange for kids to go to school with and play with their friends.

In this particular situation with Wake Forest, I don't think it really matters what the nation wants, per se, as much as it's about what the tax payers of Wake Forest want. It's their taxes that are going into the schools, their votes that got Tedesco and board elected to oversee how those tax dollars are spent.

It's hard for me to talk about integration, segregation and liberty all in the same topic. I believe with all my heart that parents should be able to live where they want (within their means) and that vouchers should be issued so that their kids can attend school where they choose and that transportation to those schools is the parent's responsibility.

Since we *don't* have a voucher type system, then I believe that the next best option is community or neighborhood based schools. If you live within x distance of a school, then that's where you go. And where your friends go. Race, socio-economic, or gender shouldn't enter into it, period.

Yes, I'm fully aware that generally speaking, in that area, the "poor folk" are minorities, and I know that generally, people tend to live, play, and worship with people they are comfortable with, and alot of the time, that ethnic make up is very one-sided. I'm not sure though, that the collection of people in one neighborhood is based on the principles of segregation. If a black family moves into town, and wants to live in a predominantly black area, so what? Are we to tell them they *can't* move there because it would cause the neighborhood school to be over a pre-specified percentage line?

It is far different for that black family to move to a predominently white area and tell them they *can't* live there, because they are (insert dividing line here - black, poor, have spacial needs kids, whatever). THAT is racism.

eta: Look at ANY church in Wake Forest and you'll find a majority of one ethnic group. No one forces them to go to a specific church, or even to go to church at all. But you'll see that people tend to gravitate toward people with the same cultural and philosophical ideas. It's the nature of humans. It's when that is FORCED upon people that it becomes racism. [/eta]

To punish the children with long bus rides and division of friends and very important social relationships just because of some NAACP asshat screaming about "segregation" doesn't make sense to me. Where was that asshat when the "predominantly white" school in Wake Forest was in danger of closing down because of the crappy test scores? He wasn't screaming for racial equality THEN.

Let the people live where they *want* to live. Let's zone the schools according to geographic area, PERIOD. Let's build schools in the area with a high population of kids so we can reduce the number of kids in the classroom, give them more opportunity to use the just as updated computer labs as the ones across town. To read the same books as are in the library across town. You're going to be spending that money ANYWAY, might as well make ALL the schools equally awesome (or crappy, depending on your opinion of NC curriculum, which I'm here to tell you, isn't that awesome to start with).

I fully understand that a line has to be drawn somewhere, and that might just be down the middle of one street, and that we'll have kids on one side of the street going to one school, and the kids on the other side going to another, but it's FAR FAR better to make that line based on geography RATHER than on race or who can't afford to spend $2 a day on school lunch.

To me, anything else is racism/discrimination.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

As someone who lives a couple counties over from Wake County (I don't have a dog in that race), but as someone who pays NC taxes, I think that the argument about the tea-party is moot. I don't really care if the school board is Republican, Democrat, or Socialist. It simply doesn't matter.

I agree completely....