The groups said they've launched an investigation, beginning with an official public records request to the Zebulon Police Department asking for "all documents related to license checkpoints, as well as all documents related to compliance with the North Carolina Racial Profiling Act."

They sent letters to Zebulon Police Chief Tim Hayworth and to Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison, whose deputies were said to be at some of the checkpoints as well.

I called the Zebulon P.D. to ask for a response. I was told that Chief Hayworth is out of town until Monday, will not make any comment until then, and that no one else is authorized to comment.

I also called Sheriff Harrison. Phyllis Stephens, Harrison's aide, said he just got the complaint today, is checking his records and wlll respond later on.

The full statement is below:

Not quite "Ex-Presidents" (Saturday Night Live), but the 19 former Wake County school board members—including 10 former chairs—were an impressive, and bipartisan group when they gathered Monday in Raleigh. They came together with an offer of help, and an admonition about the importance of diversity, for the new school board majority. Their full statement is below the fold. (Note: The number of signers is now 23.)

According to Yevonne Brannon, who heads the Great Schools in Wake coalition, the 19 included every living ex-board member since 1976, when the Raleigh and Wake County school systems were merged, who wasn't out-of-state or out-of-country this week.

Not a single ex-member who was contacted declined to sign the statement, Brannon said.

The 19 gathered at the old Murphey School in Raleigh, which was wonderfully symbolic. The school's been converted to housing, and the auditorium is now home to the Burning Coal Theater Company.

But in 1960, the old Raleigh City School Board met in the auditorium and decided, four years after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, to begin the integration of Raleigh's schools, which up to then were racially segegated.

School leaders should continue to strive, the ex-members said, for schools with achievement and diverse student populations:

Schools that strive for high academic achievement, strong support for teachers, diverse student populations, community and parent involvement, modern facilities, and a positive climate for learning, should continue to be our benchmarks for excellence.

The full statement, and the lister of signers, is below.

“I’m talking about setting the choice-application draw patterns and the algorithm different,” Tedesco said.

What?

He was trying to say that some unpopular school assignments made by the old school board might’ve been more popular if the parents had been allowed to choose them.

“I don’t get it,” said Anne McLaurin, a member of that old board who’s now on the minority side of the new board’s 5-4 split.

The parents in question would not have chosen them, McLaurin reminded Tedesco, since “their preference was to go to the school with less poverty.”

McLaurin wasn't the only one who had trouble following Tedesco's thinking.

For more than an hour, Tedesco talked about a plan that was, as he continually emphasized, not a plan at all, but rather a conceptual method for creating a new assignment plan over the coming year. He was, at turns, mystifyingly opaque and seemingly open-minded.

The plan should reflect the county’s values, he said, including stable assignments for kids, choices for parents, the most efficient use of existing and new schools, and yes, diversity, in school populations. “If it’s one of our community values, that’s what will go into it,” Tedesco said. “The community will make that decision.”

His presentation was so general that one parent, at the end, asked heatedly why the new majority didn’t simply modify the existing assignment policy instead of attacking it—and voting to do away with diversity—to the point that the county is on the verge of a political war.

“Many of the same principles that are in [the existing] Policy 6200 are exactly what you talked about today,” said Jim Martin, a chemistry professor at N.C. State. “I’m trying to understand why we had to go through this.”

But if Tedesco wanted to leave the impression that the new majority would preserve diversity (which he usually termed “balance”) along with stability and choice, Board Chairman Ron Margiotta offered a different take as he adjourned the meeting.

To that point, Margiotta had kept his thoughts to himself, listening to Tedesco—a man half his age and many times as talkative—with only the occasional raised eyebrow or grimace.

But now, Margiotta wanted to make it clear that if he has anything to say about it, diversity won’t be a factor in future assignments.

“We’re at the beginning of a process that’s going to bring about a change in our assignment policy,” Margiotta said, choosing his words carefully. “All of us working together, I feel confident, can ensure a policy that will bring stability and choice to families—something that families have been requesting in this county for a long time.”

So after months of skirmishing, the process begins with a hint that the majority bloc may not be so rock solid. Meanwhile, diversity’s defenders vow to fight for a plan that offers stability and choice—and balance.

“I’ve heard some people say that this is over,” said Yevonne Brannon, chair of the pro-diversity Great Schools in Wake coalition, assuring a crowd of 150 at the GSIW forum in North Raleigh the night before the board meeting. “No, it’s only just starting.”

With all of the turmoil around the Wake school board's stance on diversity and student assignment, the fact that the new board adopted a cut-the-budget plan Tuesday and immediately terminated 68 employees got far less attention than it merited. What followed — career employees "riffed" (fired) in a manner apparently taken from the CIA handbook — was absolutely horrifying.

One of the employees at Project Enlightenment (the building is shown at left), a valuable pre-school intervention program in Raleigh for at-risk children and their parents, sent me a column about the way she was treated — or, to be accurate, mistreated.

Lynne Johnston's piece is reproduced in full below the fold. An excerpt:

On Tuesday night during the school board meeting my coworker and I were teaching thirty-seven parents in the third class of a series called, "Positive Discipline: Firmness and Limit Setting”. This is a course we have offered multiple times each school year for decades. This workshop series would help any parent with foundation discipline skills and therefore have a positive influence on children and their classroom behavior. Arriving home Tuesday night at 10:15 pm and returning the phone calls received during the class, I learned that the job I had since 1979 was eliminated; my e-mail and computer were shut off. Additionally, after working with thousands of parents and children over the years, I would not be allowed back at Project Enlightenment the next day. First, I was told I had to be processed on Thursday at Human Resources, then, my key and badge would be taken. The packing up of a thirty year career would be supervised.

I'll try to get a response from school officials as to why she and others were treated so shabbily ...

(UPDATE: The response from Michael Evans, the school system's chief spokesman, is at the end of the post below.)

... in the meantime, do read her account in its entirety:

The Wake Education Partnership's report on student assignment policies is out this morning. It's not a plan, the WEP emphasizes. But it is a roadmap to how the new Wake school board majority should approach the making of a plan — one that retains diversity and socioeconomic balance in the schools while also offering stability to Wake families. It's a must-read, if possible before John Tedesco gets up this afternoon with his thinking on the subject.

Creating a plan that serves the county well won't be easy. It never was easy, and the bigger the county gets, and the more spread out (and economically segregated), the harder it's going to be. Nor, the WEP emphasizes, will everybody get everything they want. But we can have a sound system that serves everybody's needs by working things out in a collaborative and transparent way, Ron Margiotta.

That, the WEP says, and by all agreeing to adhere to a single common standard: "The plan must provide all children — from those who struggle academically to the highest achievers — a real chance to reach their full potential. Anything less would be selling students short for the sake of convenience."

Key points:

* The focal point of discussion about balance will be east Raleigh, north Garner and a large section of eastern Wake County. This is where most low-income families live and where the issues of balance and building efficiency are the most difficult to resolve. That is partly because some neighborhoods in this area have more students than nearby schools can handle, not less.

* The one issue that will make or break almost any assignment plan is parental choice. This is a political reality rather than an academic necessity. In the simplest terms, families in suburban areas must feel they have enough meaningful choices to guarantee their support of the bigger system. At the same time, the school board must be able to exert enough control over those choices to guarantee schools do not become segregated.

Conclusion:

With careful planning and community involvement, Wake County can create a student assignment model that provides both stability and balance.

Public support will be critical, which means the financial costs must be obvious. Computer simulations also should be run so parents and policymakers know what to expect before the buses roll.

It has never been easy during the 34-year history of the Wake County Public School System to maintain diverse schools, but it is just as important today — if not more so.

The Great Schools in Wake coalition is out with a statement ripping the new school board majority for its seat-of-the-pants approach to policymaking. You can read it below. It prompts me to write a quick post about the "public meeting" the majority is holding tomorrow and announced yesterday with barely the legally required 48 hours notice. What kind of public body holds a meeting at 4 pm on Friday afternoon to do anything, let alone take up a presentation that should've been heard in a committee that never seems to meet at all?

That's what's happening. The Student Assignment Committee, chaired by the inimitable John Tedesco, has not met yet to consider what the new policy on student assignments is supposed to be. (It did meet once to rubber-stamp some piecemeal moves the board wanted to make before it figures out what its policy is going to be — i.e., shoot first, aim later.)

Remember, it's the board majority that keeps saying we need a new policy, because the old one that's served the county quite well for 30 years, the one that includes diversity as a factor, doesn't suit them.

OK, you named the committee. (And promised a nine-to-15 month public process.) Why doesn't it ever meet?

Turns out, though, that Tedesco's been showing folks a "conceptual" plan — not THE plan, he emphasizes, just HIS plan — and now people want to see it, including the other members of the school board.

How about doing that in a properly announced committee meeting held at a time when the public can attend?

But no, the new majority gets antsy when the public shows up, muttering things like "Here come the animals."

Public hearings? It reassigned 100 kids from Garner to Southeast Raleigh High School without so much as a good-bye wave, let alone a hearing or prior notice.

Hearings on diversity? Never been one.

Hearings on student achievement? The same.

So the board will meet Friday at 4 in its cramped conference room to hear Tedesco's presentation, and the only way the public's going to see it is the invaluable WRAL, which will stream it online and make it available afterward on its website, as it's doing with all the school board meetings.

Great Schools in Wake has called on the board majority to move its meetings to a bigger hall so the public can attend without having to get tickets in advance. Board Chair Ron Margiotta's response? No response.