Some committee members: Negative reaction to realignment plan is about racism

Reaction to the two redistricting options outlined in August as part of Wayne County Public Schools Fall 2020 Student Realignment Study has been overwhelmingly negative, the company charged with helping to create — and gauging public opinion on — the study reports.

Cropper GIS founder and president Matthew Cropper told the committee Monday evening at a planning meeting that hundreds of those who responded to the survey disagreed with the plan to pull students from the northern end of the county and to move them into city schools.

But committee members had different opinions on what the results of the survey actually mean. 

Some argued that there were legitimate concerns about everything from a perceived threat to property values and potential transportation challenges to an unnecessary increase in school transitions for military children.

One committee member, Keith Copeland, however, suggested that opposition to the plans was about race.

“These schools were segregated a while back … and when somebody said, ‘No. You’re going to have to desegregate,’ nobody’s making positive comments. So why should we expect there to be positive comments when we’re talking about a change now?” Copeland said. “There are going to be people who don’t want things to change.

“For some, it’s just racial and economic bias and prejudice. And I’m not afraid to say that. So, if you want to talk about it, let’s open it up to all of that.”

Both plans that drew the public’s ire involved diversification of student populations in Goldsboro High School and the schools that feed into it — with one map increasing the white population at GHS from 3% to more than 25%.

The maps, which were created during a months-long process that began in February when the Board of Education unanimously approved Cropper GIS to lead the redistricting effort, would also change Greenwood Middle from a school that serves fifth- through eighth-graders to one that serves sixth- through eighth-graders.

During Monday’s meeting, committee members reviewed some 91 pages of negative feedback from hundreds of residents who, Crooper said, reside, for the most part, in the northern end of the county.

“It’s not surprising that the people who were impacted are the ones who were probably the most vocal,” he said. “That’s what we see in every single community. That’s to be expected.”

But Wayne County Commissioner Joe Daughtery said he was taken aback by the “backlash.”

“I was really overwhelmed in regard to the negative comments. It was … I did not receive one single positive comment,” he said. “I’m a little disheartened over the fact that the committee has spent many hours trying to arrive at a plan, only to find that when we present it to the public, my goodness, the backlash was just unbelievable to me.”

Copeland, however, said criticism of the proposed changes should be taken with a grain of salt.

“I could not read through 91 pages of negative comments. What I saw in that was bias. I understand that people don’t like change, but a lot of it was about personal, ‘What I want for my child, and I don’t care about your child,’” he said. “And we can sit here in this room and pretend like that didn’t happen, but it definitely happened.”

Many on the planning team agreed that they didn’t read all 91 pages of comments. But Cropper summarized the complaints and will, ultimately, release them on the WCPS website to ensure transparency.

Some, he said, expressed concern regarding transportation from the northern end of the county to city schools.

“There was a lot of that,” he said. 

But others were more upset with the prospect of sending their children to schools with “quality” issues.

“Facility conditions or the scores of the schools. Things like that,” Cropper said. “There was a lot of vocal commentary about that.”

The county also heard from military families who outlined potential negative impacts on students should they have to go to several different schools because of changes regarding which — and how many — grade levels elementary and middle schools would serve under the plan.

But planning team member Glenn Barfield characterized some of those complaints as a “red herring” and likened the backlash to what occurred in Wayne County during integration.

Sylvia Barnes, president of the Goldsboro/Wayne NAACP, said she was angered by discussion she perceived as putting the needs of military children above those of the county at large.

“I want to know why you think that a military child is more important than a child that was born right here in Wayne County. That gripes me,” she said. “For us to sit in this room and think that a child that is a military child is more important than a child that was born here in Wayne County and might live here in Wayne County all of their life, that gripes me to no end.”

Mayor Chuck Allen responded.

“It’s our job, in my opinion, as leaders to look after the military because they’re not going to come in here and demand more or ask for more for their kids,” he said. “But the military is $2 million a day for this community. That’s 700-plus million dollars a year. If that walks away from this community because we didn’t look after them, that’s a problem.”

Judging by the reaction of those in the room, perhaps the most powerful comment of the evening, however, came from a district parent who serves on the planning team. 

Ashley Long argued that opposition to redistricting was about fear bred by misinformation about the quality of education offered in schools that historically have not met performance growth expectations.

Her white children, she said, are among the minority at Carver Elementary School.

“The grading systems are inherently flawed, and my children are getting an excellent education at a school that’s a D. I think (the people who don’t want their children attending schools in the central attendance district) are just fearful because they have no good quality information to go by,” she said. “But I think to say that nothing positive comes out of the proposals that we’ve done is to say that increasing utilization at the schools that are underutilized and increasing diversity is not a positive. And I think we have to look that in the face and say that some people value it and feel that it’s essential to their child’s education and some people don’t.”