The Wake County School Board races are supposed to be non-partisan, but this year that’s anything but the case.

Both Republicans and Democrats are pouring support and money into the election.

Four of the nine school board seats are up for grabs and only one incumbent, Horace Tart is in the running.

The Republican-backed “change” candidates are against mandatory year round schools and the school system’s current socioeconomic diversity policy enacted in 2000.

If they sweep Tuesday’s election, they’ll have the new majority.

“The future of our children is not a partisan issue, but it’s a big concern to the Republican Party,” said local GOP volunteer Gail Marold.

She’s also part of the political action committee “Take Wake Schools Back”.

It’s an effort to shake-up the school board in favor of candidates supporting neighborhood schools.

Marold says the PAC has funded four candidates about $400 a piece.

“When you have strong beliefs you take a stand!”

The Wake County Republican Party has endorsed; Chris Malone (District 1), John Tedesco (District 2), Deborah Prickett (District 7), and Debra Goldman (District 9).

“The sense we have right now is that parents are very, very frustrated. They don’t feel like they are being listened to, they feel like the school board has taken arrogant positions. They’ve done things in spite of overwhelming opposition,” said Wake County GOP Chairman Claude Pop

So the local party has spent $50-thousand mostly on direct mail to get out the vote for their four endorsed candidates, according to Pope.

But don’t count out Democrats who are backing three candidates in support of the board’s current policies.

“We’re involved in a major way, in a way we’ve not been involved since my knowledge which goes back to 1978,” said Wake County Democratic Party Chairman Jack Nichols.

The Wake County Democratic Party has endorsed; Rita Rakestraw (District 1), Karen Simon (District 7), and Lois Nixon (District 9).

Nichols calls this school board race the most important one in thirty years, a race to keep socioeconomic diversity policies in place.

Lawmakers merged Raleigh city schools and Wake County Schools in 1976 to diversify the student population.

Then in the year 2000, the policy was changed to reflect family-incomes.

Nichols says Democrats want to keep progressive policies in place so they too are spending money on races where the candidate usually foots his or her own bill.

“We’ve done 60-thousand direct mail pieces which we’ve not done in the past. And we’ve been running a phone bank for the past four or five weeks.

Another first, both political groups have endorsed an unaffiliated candidate in the race; the Democratic Party supports Nixon, whereas the Republicans found Prickett.

Former School Board Chairwoman Rosa Gill, (D) said she worked hard to bring all political parties to the table, “Yes. I am very loyal to my party. But when I’m working with kids, I put the kids first. That’s the way we are supposed to do it.”

No matter if Democrats stay in control of the school board they admit Wake County’s growth will continue to present challenges for the school system.

The Wake County School Board races are supposed to be non-partisan, but this year that’s anything but the case.

Both Republicans and Democrats are pouring support and money into the election.

Four of the nine school board seats are up for grabs and only one incumbent, Horace Tart is in the running.

The Republican-backed “change” candidates are against mandatory year round schools and the school system’s current socioeconomic diversity policy enacted in 2000.

If they sweep Tuesday’s election, they’ll have the new majority.

“The future of our children is not a partisan issue, but it’s a big concern to the Republican Party,” said local GOP volunteer Gail Marold.

She’s also part of the political action committee “Take Wake Schools Back”.

It’s an effort to shake-up the school board in favor of candidates supporting neighborhood schools.

Marold says the PAC has funded four candidates about $400 a piece.

“When you have strong beliefs you take a stand!”

The Wake County Republican Party has endorsed; Chris Malone (District 1), John Tedesco (District 2), Deborah Prickett (District 7), and Debra Goldman (District 9).

“The sense we have right now is that parents are very, very frustrated. They don’t feel like they are being listened to, they feel like the school board has taken arrogant positions. They’ve done things in spite of overwhelming opposition,” said Wake County GOP Chairman Claude Pop

So the local party has spent $50-thousand mostly on direct mail to get out the vote for their four endorsed candidates, according to Pope.

But don’t count out Democrats who are backing three candidates in support of the board’s current policies.

“We’re involved in a major way, in a way we’ve not been involved since my knowledge which goes back to 1978,” said Wake County Democratic Party Chairman Jack Nichols.

The Wake County Democratic Party has endorsed; Rita Rakestraw (District 1), Karen Simon (District 7), and Lois Nixon (District 9).

Nichols calls this school board race the most important one in thirty years, a race to keep socioeconomic diversity policies in place.

Lawmakers merged Raleigh city schools and Wake County Schools in 1976 to diversify the student population.

Then in the year 2000, the policy was changed to reflect family-incomes.

Nichols says Democrats want to keep progressive policies in place so they too are spending money on races where the candidate usually foots his or her own bill.

“We’ve done 60-thousand direct mail pieces which we’ve not done in the past. And we’ve been running a phone bank for the past four or five weeks.

Another first, both political groups have endorsed an unaffiliated candidate in the race; the Democratic Party supports Nixon, whereas the Republicans found Prickett.

Former School Board Chairwoman Rosa Gill, (D) said she worked hard to bring all political parties to the table, “Yes. I am very loyal to my party. But when I’m working with kids, I put the kids first. That’s the way we are supposed to do it.”

No matter if Democrats stay in control of the school board they admit Wake County’s growth will continue to present challenges for the school system.

Educators, business and community leaders gathered at the Raleigh Convention Center Monday to show support for the school system’s diversity policy, while opponents say new evidence shows socioeconomic method is not working.

Newly-appointed Wake County School Board member Keith Sutton, who represents District 4, said the group of about 50 people, who he called the “friends of diversity,” represented a belief in the policies of the Wake County School System.  Among those present:  former Wake Schools Superintendent Bill McNeal, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, former Raleigh Mayor Smedes York, Raleigh Chamber President Harvey Schmitt and former school board members Susan Parry and Rosa Gill.

“While no system is perfect, we that are gathered here today firmly believe that the system’s socioeconomic diversity policies are working and are the bedrock of the system’s success,” said Sutton.

“I think the diversity policy brings our county together,” said Knightdale Mayor Russell Killen. “I don’t want to see us be divided at a time like this. I don’t want to see us build walls around neighborhoods.”

Opponents of Wake’s diversity policy attended the news conference and said their views are being misinterpreted.

“We’re here because we’re friends of diversity,” said Sarah Redpath, of the Wake Schools Community Alliance. “We’re not saying that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we should understand what the truth is before we go forward with deciding what kind of solutions we’re looking at.”

Redpath said a newly-released Educational Policy Brief by SAS Institute researchers supports the Wake Schools Community Alliance claim that low-income students are not being served by the school system’s socioeconomic diversity policy. She and others claim the report was intentionally withheld from school board members.

SAS researchers submitted the brief to Wake Superintendent Del Burns in June. In it, they suggested that Wake County was lowering its expectations of poor children and not doing as much as other school districts to encourage them to make academic progress.

According to the brief, “WCPSS black and Hispanic students are less often represented in 8th grade Algebra, the subject identified by many, including the authors of this report, as one of the gatekeepers for college success in technical majors.”

David Holdzkum, Wake Schools’ Assistant Superintendent for Evaluation and Research, said the information in the brief was not new.

“For about the past two and a half years, we’ve had a task force of people working on the problem of increasing participation in higher mathematics for younger kids and for more kids from a variety of backgrounds,” he said. “The analyses shared in the report were interesting, but we knew that.”

Holdzkum said the reason the brief was not released in June was that it came in response to a school system-initiated comparison of the SAS research method, called EVAAS, and that of Wake’s in-house research department. A report on the comparison was published on the school system’s website in March 2009. Holdzkum maintained that the brief was part of a technical discussion of research methods, to find the best tools to help guide student improvement.

“If we made an effort to hide something, this report has as much good news as perhaps not,” he said. “So we would have had no advantage. There was no reason to hide anything.”

Eight of the 11 candidates for the Wake County Board of Education will be in Garner Thursday night. They will be participating in an unusual political forum, sponsored by a former county commissioner who has been a critic of the school system.

As of Wednesday, Phil Jeffries had commitments from all the candidates in Districts 1 and 2, and Debra Goldman from District 9. Neither District 7 candidate will be participating in the 6:30 p.m. forum at the Garner Civitan Center on Poole Drive.

“I wanted to do something that nobody had a vested interest in anything,” said Jeffries, who contributed to District 1 Candidate Chris Malone’s campaign. “I don’t have an interest in it except to try to help the kids of Wake County.”

Jeffries, who said he hopes to win back his District 2 County Commission seat next year, claimed he has no “ulterior motive” in hosting the forum. His goal, he said, is to let people get to know the candidates’ stand on issues.

“We need candidates that are interested in helping the kids,” he said. “Not interested in helping any of the four or five groups we got, not interested in helping Wake Ed Partnership. If we can’t do that, we’re not being successful.”

Jeffries, known as a fiscal conservative, said he will be asking three questions of the candidates, but has not told them the questions in advance. He promised the issues would be familiar – “nothing that they haven’t read about in the paper.”

During his tenure as a county commissioner, Jeffries supported year-round schools as a way to cut school construction costs.

Candidates scheduled to attend the forum include:

District 1 (Wake Forest, Rolesville, Wendell, Zebulon, Knightdale):   Chris Malone, Rita Rakestraw and Debbie Vair.
District 2 (Garner, Holly Springs, Fuquay Varina):  Carolene Lucas, Horace Tart, John Tedesco, Cathy Truitt
District 9 (Cary): Debra Goldman

Not attending as of Thursday afternoon:

District 7 (west Cary, Morrisville, Northwest Raleigh):  Debra Prickett, Karen Simon
District 9 (Cary):  Lois Nixon

Confused about what school board district you’re in?  Click here for the school system’s map of school board districts, or here for a list of schools in each district.

In just 15 days, Wake County voters will elect four people to serve on the Board of Education. The two candidates for the District 7 seat say they both are hearing from constituents who are fed up with reassignment and year-round schools, but they differ in their responses.

Both Deborah Prickett and Karen Simon are parents of students in Wake County schools, but that may be where their similarities end. Prickett is a longtime educator who is part of the movement for change in school board policies and a return to neighborhood schools.

“The diversity policy we have been using for 10 years is failing,” she said in a forum Tuesday at the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce. “Students need to be able to remain in a familiar school.”

Simon is a military veteran who now works for the N.C. Governor’s Crime Commission. She supports the system’s socioeconomic diversity approach and the use of year-round schools to control construction costs.

“”I know, and I hear the frustration of some parents when they talk about the multiple student assignments or the year-round calendar year that disrupts families,” she said. “But unfortunately, these are unintended consequences that stem from growth.”

While reassignment and mandatory year-round schools have taken the lion’s share of attention in this year’s school board race, they are not the only issues candidates are bringing to the table.

Both Simon and Prickett call for higher academic standards for students, citing a need for more AP and honors classes. At Tuesday’s forum, Simon suggested a county-wide academic competition she called an “Academic Olympics” to bolster student achievement.

Prickett drew on her experience as an educator and counselor to take Wake County to task for rising dropout rates.

“Wake County schools have lost their focus,” she said. “We’re spending time, money and resources on the wrong things. We must reset and make education job number one.”

Like most of the candidate forums sponsored this month by the Wake Education Partnership, attendance was low. Morrisville Mayor Jan Faulkner was in the group of about 20 who came to learn more about the candidates.

“I’m not familiar with either one of the candidates for the board of education, so I wanted to learn more about where they’re coming from, why they want to serve in that capacity,” she said.

A prominent organization that advocates for public education in Wake County is defending its non-profit status after a critic challenged the content of its on-line newsletter. The Wake Education Partnership is accused of violating federal tax regulations by attempting to sway voters in the upcoming school board election.

Joe Ciulla, a corporate lawyer and co-founder of the Wake Schools Community Alliance (WSCA), a parent advocacy group, has filed a formal complaint with the State Board of Elections. In the complaint, Ciulla alleged the Partnership is overstepping its non-profit guidelines in writing about issues in the school board elections in the most recent issue of its newsletter, In Context. He said the newsletter is “worded in a way which strongly favors candidates who support the current school policies.”

For the past three weeks, the Wake Ed Partnership has hosted candidate forums to get the issues in the upcoming school board election out before the public. Meanwhile, the WSCA is presenting its own slate of issues through a YouTube video. 

The Wake Ed Partnership said its newsletter article, titled “Facts, figures and school board politics,” was intended to present accurate information to its 6,000 subscribers.

“We are very heavily fact-oriented,” said Ann Denlinger, Partnership president. “So when we feel that there are issues out there that aren’t based on fact, decisions don’t seem to appear to be made on facts, it’s important to us that we make sure the voters and the individuals in this community have the facts.”

Ciulla said the Partnership should be informing people, but not trying to influence the results of an election.

“They’re paraphrasing candidates and making assumptions on candidates’ positions on individual issues,” said Ciulla. “And in some cases, they’re making incorrect statements.”

Ciulla said a claim about savings from year-round schools, a big issue among candidates his organization supports, was a particular catalyst for his complaint.

“Unless those seats are actually occupied, there is no savings for the taxpayers,” he said.

Denlinger said she was sorry over the dispute.

“We work very hard to be an unbiased and certainly always non-partisan source of accurate and timely information for the public,” she said.

The N.C. Board of Elections said it is reviewing the complaint. If it is an IRS issue, the board will forward it to the federal government for consideration.

Click here to review the Partnership newsletter in question.

Click here to review the YouTube video produced by the Wake Schools Community Alliance.

Nearly 80 people turned out for what may be the last big candidate forum in the Wake County Board of Education race. Unlike previous forums, the nine candidates on hand did not get the questions in advance. While they got away from their notes, they did not stray far from their key issues.

Topics like reassignment, busing, accountability, vocational education, and student achievement were covered in the questions developed by the forum’s sponsoring organizations, including The League of Women Voters of Wake County, the Junior League of Raleigh, the YWCA of the Greater Triangle, the Wake County PTA Council, and El Pueblo. Several questions were devoted to the county’s diversity policy and the problems Charlotte has faced since changing its plan.

Candidates Chris Malone (District 1) and Deborah Prickett (District 7) reiterated their support for neighborhood schools.

“We need neighborhood schools as a foundation, or community schools, whatever you want to call it, so we can create a better foundation for all kids,” said Malone.

District 2 Candidate Carlene Lucas said she favors a “controlled choice” option for diversity, but argued that neighorhood schools would be segregated.

“Whether you’re for neighborhood schools depends on what neighborhood you live in,” she said.

Candidates also fielded questions on how schools should deal with childhood obesity.

“I think a 30 minute time during the day as well as another 15 minute time for walking and talking about what they’re learning and processing some of the things that are going on,” said Cathy Truitt, candidate for District 2.

Event sponsors were pleased with the turnout.

“Approximately 800 of our members have children who are either school age or have grandchildren who are school age,” said Melissa Matton, Jr. League of Raleigh. “So we think this type of event is something that helps our members become more aware.”

Folks who attended took advantage of time after the forum to talk with candidates. Colethia Evans said her school board district seat is not on the ballot, but she attended anyway.

“This is such an important school board election that’s going to affect our children and our school for the next number of years,” she said. “So we have to make sure that we have the right people with the right focus for all of Wake kids on the Board.”

NBC 17 is featuring the school board race each week during September on its This Week on MyNC program. The show airs on Saturday mornings at 6 a.m., and on Sundays at 9 a.m. and again at 11:30 p.m.

The Wake Education Partnership held the first of four regional forums featuring candidates for the Wake County School Board Tuesday night. The audience was small but attentive as candidates laid out their vision for addressing the issues facing the state’s largest public school system.

“There has probably never been an election that’s been more important to the future, not just of our schools, but of our community,” said Ann Denlinger, president of Wake Education Partnership. “The main purpose of this debate is to inform the public regarding the candidates so that the public can make informed decisions when they go to the polls.”

Candidates Horace Tart, John Tedesco and Cathy Truitt each answered prepared questions ranging from school construction to dropout prevention. Tart, the incumbent, discussed his goal of establishing a vocational high school in the county.

“We need to meet the needs of those people who graduate from high school who are not going to college,” he said.

John Tedesco, who is endorsed by the Wake Schools Community Alliance, the Wake Republican Party and the Take Wake Schools Back political action committee, focused on meeting the needs of at-risk students.

“I was one of those free and reduced lunch children,” he said. “In that regard, I understand the challenges that we see today for the most vulnerable children.”

Truitt, a veteran educator who works as an education consultant, told the audience that consensus-building is the key to moving the school system forward.

“We can’t take the time to fight,” she said. “We’ve got to get busy building a plan for 21st century education.”

You can see more of the Tuesday night forum by clicking on the video link above. NBC 17 will be streaming each of the forums live on MyNC.com. The next forum will be Sept. 9 at noon at the Cary Chamber of Commerce.

Ray Martin is the second candidate to withdraw from the Wake County Board of Education race. Martin had registered to run for the District 9 post held by Eleanor Goettee.

His decision came after endorsements were handed out by two Wake County groups pushing for change on the school board. The Wake Schools Community Alliance and the Wake County Republican Party gave their endorsements to Debra Goldman in the District 9 race.

A news release from the Wake Republican Party stated that Martin has given his endorsement to Goldman.

“The Wake GOP appreciates Ray’s decision to graciously step out of the race and endorse Debra Goldman,” said Chairman Claude E. Pope, Jr. in the release. “Ray is a committed Republican and educator, and he made this tough decision on his own, knowing that it is best to avoid a three-way race in this school board election.”

On Friday, Jerry Ballan withdrew his name from the District 7 race. Ballan has said he will not endorse either of the two remaining District 7 candidates, Deborah Prickett and Karen Simon.

The field of candidates remains large. There are five people running for the District 2 seat, including incumbent Howard Tart of Garner. Three people are running for the District 1 seat, representing eastern and northern Wake County.