Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010

Schools debate sinks to insults

Wake County's debate about where its schools are headed grew inflammatory last week as leaders compared their opponents to animals, criminals and racists.

The traded charges of ethnic slurs, and pleas for more temperate language, sprang from a remark by Ron Margiotta, the board chairman and leader of its new majority, at Tuesday's contentious school board meeting.

"Here come the animals out of the cages," Margiotta said when opponents vocally disagreed with Bill Randall, a black conservative who had spoken in support of the board.

Margiotta's low-voiced comment passed mostly unnoticed. But a videotape posted on the Internet has gotten wide circulation. The board's new majority has moved to end the district's policy of busing students to ensure economic diversity, and opposition to that has been intense.

In an interview Thursday, Margiotta said he was "out of line." He said he was upset with the negative reaction to speakers who voiced support for a resolution directing the system to create community assignment zones.

Speakers on both sides of the community schools resolution were jeered at the meeting Tuesday. But critics of the resolution were in the majority and were more vocal. A final vote on the issue is set March 23 .

"If I offended anyone, it was not intended," Margiotta said Thursday. "It was said in the heat of the moment."

The state NAACP filed a complaintFriday accusing the Wake County school board majority of racism.

"We're deeply, deeply troubled that the chairman referred to citizens as animals," said the Rev. William Barber, state leader of the NAACP. "It not only has derogatory implications, but it has racial implications."

In an interview Tuesday, Barber himself compared Margiotta, who is of Italian descent, and his board allies to the Mafia. "This is not a dictatorship," Barber said. "This is not a gang. This is not a Mafia meeting. This is a democratic process."

Barber was upset that Margiotta had limited speakers to two minutes, a minute less than usual. The civil rights leader was also upset Tuesday that Margiotta had interrupted the Rev. Curtis Gatewood, second vice president of the state NAACP, who had called Margiotta a "white racist."

Barber said calling people animals was far worse than his Mafia remark.

Board member John Tedesco, an ally of Margiotta and grandson of an Italian immigrant, said he was disappointed with Barber's remarks.

"It's not helpful to the community," Tedesco said. "If we could get the temperature down it would help."

In the complaint, the NAACP alleges that the board's majority has used secret meetings and support from private-school boosters to push for a "racist" change in eliminating a busing system that has provided diversity in Wake County for decades.

The NAACP has asked the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which provides accreditation for Wake's middle and high schools, to investigate the complaint.

Jennifer Oliver, a SACS spokeswoman, said most schools in the South have accreditation and that losing it could affect students applying to college. But that would come only at the end of a long process in which the district would try to resolve any violations, she said.