Democrats charge racism, mischaracterize school report

It will not.

The report also recommends that any division efforts "take care to ensure equality."

"This is a racist plan to resegregate our schools, plain and simple," state Democratic Party Executive Director Kimberly Reynolds said in response to the report clearing a legislative study committee. "Allowing rich, often white, suburbs to secede will leave communities of color and low-income North Carolinians worse off and will hurt future generations, our economy and the entire state. Republicans should drop this plan immediately."

Study committee Chairman Bill Brawley said he was "disappointed that people would use that rhetoric."

"But I feel it means they don't have a policy answer to the issues we've raised, so they just call us names," said Brawley, R-Mecklenburg.

"There is no bill to break up a school system," he said. "There's no procedure to break up a school system. There's nothing in the report today that will cause any school system to break up."

Brawley carried the bill that created this study committee after legislation of his that would have allowed municipalities, including his hometown of Matthews, to establish their own charter schools failed last year. That bill passed the House, with support from the Republican majority and six votes from Democrats, but it stalled in the state Senate.

When the study committee bill passed, some expressed fears that it was a back door to segregation. State Sen. Angela Bryant, D-Nash, called segregation "the elephant in the room" in a speech opposing the measure on the Senate floor.

For cities or other areas to split off from large county systems, like Mecklenburg and Wake, it would take action from the General Assembly, and some in Matthews have called for just that. In 2016, concerned over school assignment plans, the town's mayor convened a yearlong study on the issue.

Brawley said Wednesday that the legislative study committee's work made it clear how difficult such a break-up would be. It also found no proof that the size of a school system, called a Local Education Agency, or LEA, in North Carolina, correlates with student performance.

Committee members did agree, though, that a, "strong inference can be drawn that smaller school size contributes to improved student performance."

"The issue all along has been what is the best way to improve the educational outcomes for our children and, if the school systems are too big, how do we solve that problem," Brawley said. "(The committee) couldn't determine if the school systems are too big."

When WRAL News challenged the language the Democratic Party used to describe the report Wednesday, spokesman Robert Howard said the party was simply "calling a spade a spade."

"The General Assembly even debating this is with the goal of re-segregating our schools and allowing rich, often white suburbs to secede," Howard said in an email. "Any discussion about this issue needs to be called what it is, which is what we did."