The Wake school board meets tomorrow (Tuesday). A day later, the YWCA and WakeUP Wake County are co-hosting a community forum on school issues. For the activists, it's a chance to compare notes with each other and board member Keith Sutton. For those concerned about the schools who haven't been active as yet, it's a chance to make some acquaintances -- including Mr. Sutton -- and get in on the ground floor of the still-forming "Great Schools in Wake Coalition."

The forum starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the YWCA, 554 E. Hargett St., Raleigh -- five blocks east of Fayetteville Street on Hargett.

A press release with more details is below the fold.

What critics term "busing" in Wake County -- or sometimes "forced busing" -- is in reality a web of policies mixing neighborhood schools, year-round schools, and magnet schools  with a limited number of assignments (usually for kids from low-income neighborhoods) to somewhat distant schools for the purpose of maintaining socioeconomic diversity in all schools. Pull the diversity thread out of the web, add a new policy of "equal funding for all schools," and you may begin an unraveling that ends with the collapse of the magnet system. Thus, though new Board of Education Chair Ron Margiotta has written recently [his letter is copied below the fold] to assure magnet-school supporters that his new majority bloc has not discussed any changes to the current magnet system, many worry that what they are discussing will submarine it, intentiionally or otherwise. And Margiotta's letter, of course, doesn't say they won't change the magnet program eventually, only that they haven't gotten around to it as yet.

Enloe High School students are organizing in support of the magnet program, including an online petition which can be found, and signed, here.

The petition reads:

To: Wake County School Board

For years Wake County has had a policy that ensured students would attend diverse schools. Students would be able to go beyond their own social classes and experience views expanding across the entire world by stepping through their school doors at 7:00am. Students were taught that no matter what their class, race or religion, it was possible to unite and form a community that was strengthened by their differences. However, there are plans in motion to change this current system. There are those who wish to build neighborhood schools that would socioeconomically segregate students. Not only would the division between lower-income students and higher-income students cut deeper, but racial diversity could very well take a step backwards by discouraging students to venture beyond their own racial group.

Please, sign this petition and preserve diversification within our schools.

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(Update 2: Word from Ron Margiotta is, there will be no controversial issues on the COW agenda Tuesday. Staff is putting it together, his email says, but he's sure diversity will not be part of it. Hence all the x-outs below where it used to say otherwise, you know, about having a COW.)

(Update 1: WakeUP Wake County will coordinate the formation of a "pro-excellence" coalition; name is the "Great Schools in Wake Coalition." This from Yevonne Brannon, WUWC's board chair. "Groups and individuals concerned about the impact of decisions made by the Wake Board of Education" are invited to join. The meeting today -- see below -- produced a working draft of the mission statement, which is being reviewed by a dozen or so allies and potential allies. Brannon's contact: ybrannon@hotmail.com)

Emails are going around about the need to get there early Tuesday afternoon to be sure of getting into the Wake school board meeting. One suggested getting there an hour ahead of the 3 p.m. start time. But the real action could be in the Committee of the Whole meeting that begins at 1 p.m. in the tiny Board conference room (though if enough people show up, they'd presumably move to the meeting room). There's no agenda for the COW as yet (I sent a note and left a voice message for Board Chair Ron Margiotta -- will update when I hear anything more). But it's worth noting that when the new board majority reversed itself last week and voted to put its proposed resolution on student assignments -- the one that struck out all references to diversity as a desirable thing -- they put it into the policy committee and the COW. (Background on their first meeting here.) Thus far, there is no policy committee, and a couple of folks who've spoken with Margiotta lately have the impression he doesn't plan to name one.

In short, if you're thinking that diversity can't be on the Tuesday agenda at 3 because it's been referred to a committee that has yet to meet, you may or may not be rright -- it's entirely possible the resolution on diversity will be discussed by the COW at 1 o'clock and be ripe for action when the Board convenes formally at 3.

As you may already know, the teabag crowd (Americans for Prosperity) has made turning the Wake school system upside down its latest cause. They're emailing folks to show up for a rally at the Wake Board offices at 2:30.

Meanwhile, WakeUP Wake County hosted a meeting today of groups not aligned with the teabaggers. It was an invite-only meeting; not for press ears. But the purpose was to establish a mainstream coalition with a mission statement that says everyone should take a deep breath before doing something they'll regret to Wake's schools. More on that soon.

Great reporting by the N&O's Josh Shaffer, which allows only one conclusion: Wake County Commissioner Tony Gurley, pretender to the chairman's seat, has lost his mind, perhaps in the same location where his fellow Republican Commissioners Joe Bryan and Paul Coble lost theirs. It's a must-read ... and a must-remember.

One question: Democrat Betty Lou Ward has been on the Board of County Commissioners for 21 ydears, and she didn't know that when she left the room without asking to be excused, she was opening the door to the Republicans' trick? Of course she did. Still, the Republicans's behavior, which lasted all night and into the morning hours, was inexcusable. What were they doing, trying to out-boor the Republicans on the Wake school board?

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As the first meeting of the "new" Wake County Board of Education ended last night, more than five hours after it began, I listened in as former board member Carol Parker and former candidate Curt Stangler were discussing what they'd just seen. Parker said she was furious about the majority's preemptory tactics.  Stangler, not disagreeing, predicted better times ahead -- because how could things get worse?

I should immediately add that Parker's not the furious type, and Stangler even less so, if that's possible. You're looking for solid moderates? Reasonable people who'll listen to every side? They are all of that. Parker was part of the old pro-diversity majority when she was on the board, Stangler a mild critic when he ran in '05. (He lost to Eleanor Goettee in District 9, the Cary district.) But there's not a strident bone in either one of them. And last night, sitting together, they probably constituted the only unaligned pair of observers in a meeting room filled with angry teachers, angry parents, angry (or appalled) Wake school system officials, a few folks who were on the side of the new board majority, and of course  the objective press corps, myself included.

My point is, if even Carol Parker and Curt Stangler thought the new board majority had just screwed up (and they're much too polite to use such a word, but on the way out of the meeting Parker repeated to Debra Goldman, who's part of the majority bloc, how furious she was about their tactics), it's a pretty good indication that the majority's debut as public officials in charge was an unmitigated failure.

Let's review: There were two ways the new five-member majority could've handled their first meeting. One was, they could've reached out to those on the other side -- including the other four members of the board -- and initiated the kind of gradual, thoughtful and community-wide change process that the issues facing the school system clearly merit ... and that some of the five, at least, have been promising since they were elected. They won; they have an agenda; no need to rub everybody's noses in it.

The other way: They could charge in, ignore everybody who's missed out on the Kool-Aid, do the same thing they accused the old board of, which is not listening to people with different ideas, and attempt to get their way real fast before any opposition can get organized to stop them.

The five -- Goldman, Debra Goldman, Deborah Prickett, Chris Malone, John Tedesco, and the new chair, Ron Margiotta -- chose the second way.

If there'd been any fur in the room, it would've flown a few minutes after the meeting started.

But then a funny, if predictable thing happened. The five of them blinked.

Having pissed off just about everybody there with an amazingly brazen or else tone-deaf brand of political pushiness, the five seemed all of a sudden to get cold feet, and they backed away from most of their own agenda.

Thus, they ended up with the worst of both worlds: They came off looking like power-hungry pols who didn't give a damn about consensus; but unlike your effective PHP's, they'd failed to finish the job and in fact let themselves be talked out of most of what they proposed rather easily -- which made them look inept.

That's not to say they won't follow through on all of it eventually. It's only to observe that, after coming to their first meeting loaded for bear -- with a list of eight giganto policy resolutions they literally pulled out of their pockets and threw on the table -- the new majority hemmed and hawed and struggled to defend their positions to the point that you wondered about their ability to, you know, plan ahead?

I mean, if you're going to act like a bully, you shouldn't cave in at the first sign of resistance.

As we were walking out of the meeting, Goldman said her intention was to present the various resolutions for debate -- "get the issues on the table" -- and not to ram them through. She anticipated lots of discussion and give-and-take, she said. She seemed sincere (and a little shell-shocked).

But if that's what she intended, it sure didn't come off that way. Which Parker told her straight up. Goldman said she was chagrined that most of the teachers, who'd hooted loudly at the new board's openers and used the public comment period to chew them out, walked out a little later -- after Margiotta threatened to have them removed unless they quieted down.

Parker told her they had a right to walk out, and she predicted that the way the majority conducted itself would only serve to awaken a sleeping giant -- the vast number of teachers, parents and other supporters of the Wake school system who didn't vote in October, probably because they thought both sides in the campaign had a point, but who aren't going to like it if the new board tramples everything that's positive about the Wake system.

Stangler thought that Goldman should be credited for sounding a conciliatory note, and pulling her allies back from the brink, after the others had dug themselves a deep hole with their blustery beginning.

Fair enough. I also thought John Tedesco, who talked community-wide process in his interview with me a month ago but came in firing last night, had a moment of clarity at a key point, albeit only after Goldman got through  to him that things were dangerously out of control.

The Tedesco/Goldman moment came as the majority was preparing to obliterate the longstanding board policy on diversity, the major issue in the campaign. The five presented their resolution and, after a brief exchange, rejected by a 5-4 vote a motion by Keith Sutton, a board member in the pro-diversity minority, to refer the matter to the board's policy committee.

Given that the resolution wasn't on the meeting agenda, and no one had seen it before last night (and the majority brought no copies to share), sending it to a committee seemed a reasonable -- no, obligatory -- step.

The diversity policy, after all, is only the cornerstone of the system's three decades of success, and maybe you don't just want to toss it out without hearing a little discussion first?

But no, the majority voted as a bloc to plow ahead. On a 5-4 vote, it rejected Sutton's motion. But with Goldman obviously uncomfortable, Tedesco called for a five-minute recess, and after the five huddled, they came back and reversed themselves, accepting Sutton's motion unanimously.

By then, however, their dye was cast. They were bullies, but also weak. And the chance they'd had to bring their critics around to a consensual change process was out the door.

Four of the five, of course, are new members -- and three are novices at holding public office. (Chris Malone is a former Wake Forest committeeman.) Maybe I'm going soft, but it's possible for me to imagine that the three, at least, didn't mean to strike a confrontational note, they simply blundered into it.

But the chair, Margiotta, isn't new. He's been a board member for six years, and it was his job -- after his allies elected him -- to set the proper tone. I'm no judge of whether he, too, blundered, or whether he thought belligerence was the right way to go. But Margiotta, who said little throughout the meeting, was obviously  prepared to adopt every one of the eight resolutions on the spot until Goldman and Tedesco pulled back. He set the tone, all right, and his colleagues followed him off the cliff.

So what did the Board actually do, or not do, last night? A brief blow-by-blow will follow below the fold.