The Wake County school district, in Raleigh, North Carolina, is doing everything in its power to annoy parents and encourage those who can afford private schools to patronize them. A state appellate court ruled on Tuesday that Wake can force a pupil who is zoned for one of the county's year-round schools to attend it. (Some parents previously objected to their children's placement in year-round facilities, and last year a lower court sided with them.) A poor winner, the district reacted to the appellate ruling with contempt for the families it ostensibly serves. "These people need to go where they're supposed to go," said Beverley Clark, vice chairwoman of the school board. Wake Country claims that year-round schools can house more children, and that enrolling pupils in such facilities is the only way the district can manage its weedy population growth. School officials don't mention that the district's harebrained plan to integrate its schools socioeconomically (such that no one facility enrolls a student body that is more than 40 percent low-income) is crowding certain schools. Amy Leinfelder, who began homeschooling her children after their school went year-round, said, "I feel so badly for all those kids who will be forced to go to year-round when it doesn't work for their families." But in Wake County, public schools don't serve families, they socially engineer them.
"Wake schools regain control over year-round plan," by T. Keung Hui and Kinea White Epps, Raleigh News & Observer, May 7, 2008