T. Keung Hui, News & Observer (Raleigh), Sept. 21, 2009
There’s no mistaking where the school board candidates in northern and eastern Wake County stand on hot-button issues such as student reassignment, school funding and the diversity policy.
Voters in District 1 who think the Wake school system is moving in the right direction and want to preserve the diversity policy will likely choose Rita Rakestraw, who has the backing of groups who support current policies.
But those who think Wake is out of control and spends too much time on busing can choose between Chris Malone and Debbie Vair.
The decision voters will make in two weeks in District 1 could help decide whether Wake continues its nationally recognized diversity policy or moves to a system of neighborhood schools.
“This is the most important school board election in 30 years,” said Rakestraw, a former teacher. “Our community is at a crossroads.”
{snip}
The diversity policy has emerged as a sharp dividing line for the candidates. At issue is Wake’s practice of trying to balance the percentages of low-income students at each school, a policy that causes some students to be bused to more distant schools.
“Diversity is a fine thing,” said Malone, a former Wake Forest town commissioner. “We should strive to know more about other cultures and encourage understanding. But that has to be secondary to the primary goal of education.”
But for Rakestraw, keeping schools balanced is an important part of providing a high-quality education. She credits the diversity policy with keeping schools healthy, fueling economic growth and leading to Wake having a higher SAT score than the national average and a higher graduation rate than the state average.
Getting to diversity
Rakestraw warns that dropping the diversity policy will lead to resegregation and an increase in the number of high-poverty schools. She says that this would result in higher taxes to help fund those high-needs schools.
“It’s a good school system, but if we get rid of economic diversity, it’s going to be really harmful for the school system and the economy,” she said.
But Malone and Vair say concerns about resegregation are overblown. They say that allowing children to go to schools closer to where they live will help academics by increasing parental involvement.
“Our neighborhoods are diverse,” said Vair, a former school PTA president. “Diversity is something done in the ’60s. Our children need to stay in their neighborhoods. If any school has the right programs and teachers, it will succeed.”
Malone questions the success of the diversity policy by pointing to the recent decline in Wake’s overall graduation rate and how the district’s 54.6 percent graduation rate for low-income students is below the state average.
“I can’t imagine why they’re so proud to support a policy which is only graduating 54 percent of the group that they claim to be heroes for,” Malone said.
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on September 21, 2009)
Comments
In case y’all didn’t notice, “economic diversity” in the case of Wake County is codespeak for putting primarily East and Southeast Raleigh ghetto Blacks (and to a lesser extent Hispanics) into schools in largely affluent White, Asian, and high tech multi-national style neighborhoods in North Raleigh, Wake Forest, Apex, and Cary.
One thing’s for sure though and that is that these busing programs won’t be able to survive $10 a gallon diesel fuel.
Wake County, N.C. contains Raleigh, the State Capitol, and a lot of other things that attract white liberals. And it voted Obama in 2008. Therefore, this seems to me to be a bunch of hypocrite white liberals who don’t want what they want for everyone else.
In absolutely no way should students take a long and inconvenient bus ride for the purpose of being “enriched” by diversity. There is absolutely no way white kids will be able to make it in a predominantly black or brown school. History and current events tell us that there has never been a successful society where numerous racial groups share power and live in harmony. Why the United States and Europe keep striving for such a society is beyond me.
Why cant the parents of children in San Francisco vote on whether their kids in the Richmond district will or will not bused for an hour trip to the Hunters Point Ghet-toe, where they can sit in classes with black Ghet-toe kids that are 3 or 4 grades behind them academically? Partly because the school board here is composed of white Marxists who dont have any children,or minorities who support a system that caters to children of every race except whites.
Translation: wherever they place the white and Asian kids, that’s where the school scores will improve. And vice versa.
“I can’t imagine why they’re so proud to support a policy which is only graduating 54 percent of the group that they claim to be heroes for,” Malone said.
I believe that’s the same failure rate for blacks in Buffalo public schools and everyone still has faith and confidence in they current busing system. Go figure.
I’d love to see busing overturned but history has shown us that these people are committed (or should be) to making this system work even with overwhelming evidence that it doesn’t.
I myself am a product of the Wake County educational system and thanks to their diversity policy i got to see how inner city black kids live and behave, which is why i am now an avid AR reader.
The Charlotte school district is having this same fight right now. They are trying to bus white students from a very sucessful school to a poverty ridden black school and vice versa. For heavens sake, why won’t they acknowledge that these sucessful majority white schools are doing so well because they are just that..majority white! If the school board wins and they start busing students, watch their high test scores drop like a rock, while we all sit back and watch them squirm trying to explain it.
What the school board’s current policy does is dilute the effects of blacks in any one particular school, so that it seems like the whole system is still doing well. Instead of having schools in Southeast Raleigh that are almost all black, and with a 25% graduation rate, they bus mostly un-educatable blacks and hispanics to statistically hide them in amongst the white and asian kids in other parts of the county. That way, the stats at no one particular school looks that bad.
My kids are in this system, and I have just had to educate them to stay away from blacks and hispanics, so they avoid picking up any of the pathologies that these groups display. And they know if they come back home acting like a ghetto rat in any sort of way at all, that I will knock them into next Thursday.
What would work better would be to segregate students by ability, and let the preponderance of the blacks learn enough to work at Bojangles or KFC, as trying to do much more is a time-wasting proposition. Let the hispanics learn how to dig ditches or something. Then let the white kids who have prospects to do something more than this get about their education in neighborhood schools, without having to deal with the self-defeating behavior of the lesser breeds. Better still, we could check for citizenship or legal residence upon enrollment, and save a bunch of money on worrying about the Mexicans….
Rakestraw warns that dropping the diversity policy will lead to resegregation and an increase in the number of high-poverty schools. She says that this would result in higher taxes to help fund those high-needs schools.”
What she is basically saying is the hell hole majority black and hispanic schools are sooo costly to keep running that the taxes are enormous. Somehow I think given the choice… the whites would vote for enormous taxes if at least their kids got to be educated in a non violent non integrated setting without these THUGGEEE kids
“She credits the diversity policy with keeping schools healthy, fueling economic growth and leading to Wake having a higher SAT score than the national average and a higher graduation rate than the state average.”
Exactly how does busing black kids across town and middle class kids in the opposite diriection fuel economic growth. Wasted money does not lead to growth.Just as Affirmative Action does not lead to growth.It is redistribution.Blacks can not stand the idea of whites being by themselves bothering nobody.
F-H Strumpet posts:
“…One thing’s for sure though and that is that these busing programs won’t be able to survive $10 a gallon diesel fuel…”
Unfortunately, busing will continue to be rammed down the throats of Whites and their precious children no matter what the cost of fuel is.
The money for diesel will be ‘found’ by raising class sizes, cutting aides, cutting textbooks, cutting any art programs, sports, field trips, honors and AP classes—at the White schools.
Remember: The educational-industrial complex is not about educating students (at least in a traditional manner)—it is about indoctrinating and brainwashing children into believing such false premises as everyone is equally intelligent and has the same exact potential.
They might as well teach the kids that The Earth if Flat.
Bon
I would like to point out that blacks themselves are not the driving force behind busing and integration in contemporary America. Many blacks would rather have self-sufficient schools, housing, and economies of their own than rely on whites for help. That is why the rhetoric of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Bill Cosby has resonated with so many blacks. If you actually take a close look at those behind these diversity initiatives, you’ll notice that many of them are white elites. These white elites sell out their own people by forcing them to endure the diversity and multiculturalism that they shield themselves from. In exchange, they score political points among “tolerant” leftists and even certain conservatives. I don’t want to indict either Democrats or Republicans on this matter. If whites such as ourselves want to successfully push a pro-white agenda, we cannot keep fighting one another over tired labels such as liberal or conservative.
“If you actually take a close look at those behind these diversity initiatives, you’ll notice that many of them are white elites.”
Greenberg and the other white attorneys taught and drilled him on exactly what he should say and even his gestures every evening and during the lunch breaks.
Of course the NAACP was a white organization until about 1975 when blacks finally took control of their own organization and finally managed to elect the first black president.
When I have done research on busing kids to achieve some sort of artifical standard of “diversity” it is almost always lower middle class and working class White schools that have this indignity placed on them. The elites in gated communities would be up in arms if their kids were subjected to this sort of educational suicide. Notice where members of Congress and the Senate (not to mention the President himself) send their children, plus they deny the rest of us vouchers so that we could have that kind of educational excellence for our children. Honestly I would not recomend Sidwell Friends school due to the extreme liberalism that is taught there. The girl that disrupted Congressman Tancredo’s speech was an alumna and look what happened to her. Anyway, the best bet is to get our kids out of the social experiments that are public schools, just today there was an article about Tucson public schools having a two tier system of discipline, one for Whites and another for minorities.
“Exactly how does busing black kids across town and middle class kids in the opposite diriection fuel economic growth”
Busing puts money in the pockets of bus manufacturers, parts manufacturers, gas, oil, brake fluid etc companies, it pays bus drivers who use the money to buy things, it pays supervisors and coordinators and liasoners and facilatorers, it pays ACLU and NAACP attorneys who sue when a bus driver orders a black thug to stop throwing things. There is a lot of money and jobs involved in school busing. Just look at the cost of just one 30 year old second or third hand school bus.
And all those affirmative action jobs for the blacks and browns paid for by the productive White taxpayer.
“….There is a lot of money and jobs involved in school busing…”
margaret:
This is why in LA, one of the most polluted cities on earth, not one word was uttered about the massive amounts of air pollution caused by busing kids back and forth across town in diesel buses excused from pollution constraints.
For years, LA Unified, because of busing, was LAs largest contributer to air pollution.
Bon
