In another decision released by the North Carolina Supreme Court, justices ruled in favor of school boards reassigning students without parental approval. The case stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Wake county parents against their school board to prevent their children from being forced into a year round schedule.
Similar complaints have popped up in Mecklenburg and Guilford counties. In an indictment of voter apathy Justice Bob Edmunds noted in his concurring opinion that parents could express their displeasure with the school board during semiannual elections.
For many years the parents of school age children have tried to stand up to the self sustaining bureacracy of the school systems to no avail. During a well funded campaign I was involved with many years ago I was shocked to hear voters say that they were "ineligible" (sic) to vote in school board elections since they didn't have children in the schools! And people wonder how some of these boards get elected?
And if you are lucky enough to get a parental advocate elected to your board, watch out. Staff can brainwash them in a short amount of time. In Wake county, the "tradition" was to have the board decide in advance what each members opinion on an issue was and then have the ofiicial vote be unanimous in order to show some sort of fasle unity. While not only subverting the open meetings law, this was really an affront to the democratic proccess. How do you hold a school board memeber accountable for their votes if they don't vote their true views?
This ruling is a wake up call to the real consumers of public education: Not the teachers union, not the school system administration and not the chamber of commerce. Its the parents. Maybe they'll remember in October and November.
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