RALEIGH – The new conservative majority on the Wake County Board of Education got a pop quiz at its initial board meeting in early December. Then the five conservatives – four newcomers plus new board chairman Ron Margiotta – got another impromptu exam at Tuesday’s meeting.
So far, I’d give the board passing grades on some very difficult tests.
Right off the bat, it’s important to remember how daunting the challenge is. The conservatives have a 5-4 majority on the board of the largest school district in North Carolina – a district right in the capitol city, in the center of the state’s political and media establishment, and a district that the Left around the country has come to see as heroic for continuing forced-busing policies that have been abandoned just about everywhere else.
The district has been run for years by a small cabal of school staffers, accommodating board members, and political and policy elites in Raleigh. They are used to getting their way. In the past, when newly elected members joined the board with the stated intention of representing Wake parents disgruntled with the system’s assignment plans and other policies, the cabal has managed first to isolate them and later to change their minds.
Never before, however, has an entire slate of critics been elected together to form a majority. The cabal knows the old insider tactics won’t work this time.
So no matter what they do, the conservatives on the Wake school board are going to be attacked, regularly and viciously. Their adversaries in the political establishment, the media, and activist groups – the ones who worked tirelessly but fruitlessly to block their election – will never be reconciled to a policy agenda that junks forced busing, returns year-round schooling to an option rather than a dictate, and offers parents greater choice in where and how their children will be educated.
Because these adversaries consider their position to be morally superior, and their role to be analogous to the civil-rights pioneers of the past, they will feel no compunction about doing whatever it takes to frustrate the will of the vast majority of Wake County citizens. In their minds, the adversaries are reliving the 1950s. Some truly believe that white-hooded segregationists lurk in every SUV and cul-de-sac they see.
They are, in other words, essentially irrational. They can’t be reasoned with. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be listened to carefully, for the purposes of choosing the right strategy for the moment.
Conservatives on the Wake school board need always to remember that their cause is the just one – that they are the ones fighting for the rights of parents and students. Because they are clearly correct on the substantive issues in dispute, and are inheriting control of a school system whose disadvantaged students perform worse than the state average, the conservatives should approach their task with confidence, firm resolution, and a commitment to openness and transparency.
There was nothing wrong with the conservative candidates meeting privately before the election to coordinate their electoral strategies and messages. There was also nothing wrong with the conservatives meeting after the election, but before taking office, to discuss common ideas and objectives.
Furthermore, there was nothing wrong with pressing ahead at the first meeting to elect Margiotta the new chairman of the board, even though the past practice of the board was for the term of the chairman to extend halfway into the year after board elections. There had never been a substantial change in the makeup and policies of the board before, so there hadn’t been a need for immediate leadership votes until now.
In all these cases, the new Wake Board of Education majority acted like the winners of virtually every other federal, state, and local election. It was disingenuous, to say the least, for critics suddenly to conclude that just-elected politicians don’t have the right to caucus, or that new majorities don’t have the right to reorganize their legislative bodies to conduct a government’s business.
However, I think the conservatives erred on other matters. They should have made sure to have copies of their policy resolutions available for members and the public to peruse. While it was important to send an immediate message to staff and the public that the majority was, in fact, going to follow through on its campaign promises, it should have been more clearly stressed that they will be taking plenty of time to gather the necessary information, hear from all affected parties, and then design the detailed plans necessary to bring Wake County’s school-assignment policies into the modern era. And at the second meeting, I think it would have been wiser to create a bidding process for securing outside counsel to review the system’s contracts for legal representation, rather than immediately awarding the contract without one.
These were errors of newness and transition, not sins of bad faith. Unfortunately, they provided the board majority’s adversaries a way to change the subject and score political points. As long as the focus remains on forced busing and parents’ lack of choice in the current system, the conservatives win. It is in their interest – and those of the community as a whole – if the conservatives maintain that focus and exercise their new leadership of the board in keeping with the principles of open, limited, and effective government.
If they do everything right procedurally, they will still be vilified by the Raleigh education establishment for their substantive policies. That’s okay – Wake voters don’t care much for the Raleigh education establishment, for good reason.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation