
Six of nine members – board Chair Eric Davis and members Kaye McGarry, Tim Morgan, Joe White, Trent Merchant and Rhonda Lennon – said Tuesday their top priority is keeping kids close to home, with neighborhoods and school-feeder patterns united when possible.
The other three – Vice Chair Tom Tate, Richard McElrath and Joyce Waddell – said their top priority is balancing school poverty. But that came in third in overall rankings, behind neighborhood schools and keeping assignments stable and predictable. Effective use of buildings and buses was last on the list of four.
McElrath argued that students consigned to mostly black schools in impoverished neighborhoods face bleak academic prospects.
“The people who have always been at the bottom are still going to be at the bottom,” said McElrath. The vote signals that “the standard for CMS is segregation, and if you value diversity you can go to a magnet…if you’re lucky.”
Charlotte Observer
I am really sick and tired of poverty pimps like Richard McElrath claiming segregation and racism every time they don’t get their way. Is anybody forced to move into the neighborhood they live in? Were they told they had to live there? No, so there is no segregation and people like McElrath have stripped the word of any meaning it once had because they throw it around like candy.
Neighborhood schools make sense. A kid should be able to go to the school closest to his home, with his friends, with people he knows from his community and where it will be easier for his parents to be involved. It’s plain, simple logic.
McElrath’s argument is that the schools in poor areas suck. Well clean them up then!! Isn’t that his job as a member of the Mecklenburg County school board? What the hell is he sitting in that position for if he is going to ignore the disease causing the symptoms? Get the trouble makers out of the school, the kids who keep causing trouble, dealing the drugs, doing the fighting, kick them out forever! Expel them permanently! What is so hard about this? No amount of busing and reassigning kids to schools all over the county are going to become a substitute for poor parenting, Mr. McElrath, and that is what it comes down to.
These school board members moan and complain about these under performing schools but they rarely take any action to remove the students that are hindering the learning of all the others there. Would they put up with that kind of behavior in their workplace? Of course not, so why is it acceptable for our kids to have to deal with it?
I supported McElrath in his election against his predecessor because she was a radical loon and he seemed to be more sensible, but his comments are disappointing.
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