Schools in Wake County, North Carolina became a national story when, in 2009, a hard-right slate of candidates was elected to the school board pledging to overturn a successful program integrating the schools by income. The NAACP filed a complaint, Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressed concern, the Department of Education launched an investigation, and ultimately, the resegregation effort bogged down a bit.
And now it's going to stay bogged down: another of the many scattered, diverse, small-in-themselves victories this election day came in Wake County, where pro-integration candidates retook the school board in a fierce fight that included $500,000 in outside spending:
On Tuesday, [Kevin] Hill defeated [Heather] Losurdo by nearly 1,000 votes, giving Democrats a 5-4 majority on the board.
Hill, a former Wake County teacher and principal, said when he won his first race in 2007 he raised just $6,000. At the end of last month, Hill reported raising more than $25,000 in his suburban Raleigh district.
Losurdo reported raising more than $82,000 by the end of October, a record for a Wake school board race.
Hill had been one of only two votes against a plan adopted last month, because:
[H]e thought it had not been fully vetted and didn't do enough to prevent low-achievement schools.
What the plan needs, Hill said, is a thorough going-over to improve the way it's communicated to the public, a line-by-line examination of its costs and a better way to make sure low-achieving students have the chance to attend high-performing schools.
"I would not suggest going back to the drawing board," he said. "I believe there are many good components to this plan."
A win this year might have led to an emboldened Republican board figuring it can have its way. Instead, Wake County has a board committed to keeping diversity as a goal and carefully looking at how that is accomplished, but also willing to look at the concerns of others.