Garner Considers Suing School District Over Busing

Garner, N.C. — Town officials planned to meet with attorneys Wednesday to discuss a possible lawsuit against the Wake County school system over its busing practices.

To diversify enrollments at its schools, the district buses thousands of students to schools outside their neighborhoods based on socioeconomic factors such as qualification for free or reduced-price lunches.

Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams said he thinks too many local students are being bused out of town while too many students from elsewhere in the county are being bused into Garner.

"I'm a proponent of busing to achieve diversity," Williams said. "(But) our new focus for these opted-out (local) students is to get them back to Garner schools."

Lower-income students have performed better on state tests because of the busing policy, district officials have said.

Williams and members of a group called Greater Garner are discussing a lawsuit with Charlotte attorneys who represented a group of parents in 1999 in a suit that ended a 30-year court-ordered desegregation policy in Wake County Schools.

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Exactly how much money is spent on maintenance/gas/drivers? How about the amount of time a child pends away from home due to greater distances from school? How much do parents spend on gas and maintenance to prevent their children from riding buses, which the American Acad. of Pediatrics and Emergency Physicians have stated to be unsafe and requiring much improving? Who is more important? children or BOE members? I was actually told that this is a fact of life in Wake and that we just have to accept it(by a BOE member). When, in a democracy, does a group of people just accept something that is not working, something that is wrong? Why should we accept putting our children at risk? Way to go Garner! I say it should go as far as to include all Citizens of Wake County, not just one town!!

Not_So_Dumb
January 4, 2007 11:26 a.m.

GOOD LUCK GARNER

DOG
January 3, 2007 7:08 p.m.

Anything that would make sense, wake county public school would do the opposite. no other county waits until 6am when buses are already en route to cancel school due to ice. my daughter is out of district, her senior year, and her sophmore year had a 4.5 gpa and they refused to let her have a transfer that year. she's always been out of district mind you, i had to change residence to keep her there. then junior and senior year allowed her to stay as a transfer. Ramey beavers is one of the ones behind all this and he is rude and hateful. good luck. hope garner wins

mom2threecld
January 3, 2007 5:01 p.m.

Student achievement isn't solely based on the amount of money spent per child per school. What policies like NCLB fail to work into the equation is the impact of the socio-economic level of the families. No matter how much schools do to try to level the playing field, students who have highly educated parents who have read to them from birth (and sometimes earlier!) will be at an advantage over students who have illiterate parents. Home climate has so much to do with a child's success in the academic world. Giving every school the same amount of money and sending them to their community schools doesn't result in a better situation - it merely places "rich kids" together at one school (which will typically result in more PTA funding, more parent volunteers, etc) and "poor kids" at another (with the opposite effect). I think Wake County's got the right idea. Their busing situation is nothing like Charlotte-Meck's was in the '90s.

Humble Opinion
January 3, 2007 4:45 p.m.

The reason Wake County School System buses students is so that the students get far enough away from home as to prevent parents from wanting to go to attend school activities. Then, the child will want to depend on the teachers for sympathy, help, etc. instead of there parents, thus introducing dependence on government from the beginning of the child's life. Then, later in life, the child will depend on government versus family to get through rough patches. Its all one great big plan to increase dependence on government to bring us closer to Europe.