Howdy

I have found that doing a full-time job, coaching two baseball teams and trying to maintain a quality family life leaves little room for much else. Given events of the past couple of weeks, I could not resist sending the following letter to the Cary News. Not sure whether it will get printed, so posting it here.

An open letter to Mayor Ernie McAllister

Mr. Mayor,

As a citizen of Cary and a parent of two children enrolled in the Wake County Public Schools system, I am asking that you publicly disclose what actions the Cary Town Council will take to represent your constituents in bringing order to the chaos following Judge Manning’s decision to block MYR conversions.

Your campaign flyer from the 2003 election listed “Assignment by choice for Cary students” as a priority for your current administration. Given thousands of Cary parents can no longer be certain which schools their children will go to or whether their calendar will be YR or split-shift, I am assuming that “Assignment by choice” will again be a key element of your platform in this year’s elections.

The Cary Town Council has consistently endorsed the actions of the Wake County Board of Education, including a public statement of support for the 2006 school bond. Earlier this year, you stated in a televised program that you were not in favor of splitting up WCPSS into smaller, more manageable districts. Further, you stated that the CTC’s approach to addressing problems with school capacity would be to continue to work with the BoE, and subsequently they were invited to participate in the CTC retreat.

Our schools are now in utter chaos. The BoE chose not to pursue a ‘Plan B’ because they were overly confident that Judge Manning would rule in their favor. Judge Manning instead ruled that the BoE’s actions were illegal. In hindsight, the decision not to develop a ‘Plan B’ was at best, arrogant, and Wake County families are now paying the price.

Parents at schools which planned as MYR will now be given the opportunity to ‘volunteer’ to have their schools converted. If enough parents do not ‘volunteer’ then the BoE has made it clear that they may move students to any school in the county, and potentially on a split-shift schedule. I expect this threat will force a lot of parents to vote for something they really don’t want.

Here are the questions I think you should answer, publicly:

1. Do you and the CTC still support the BoE and it’s actions?
2. Do you and the CTC still believe that the citizens of Cary are best-served by remaining part of WCPSS which has over 120,000 students and is growing rapidly?
3. What actions has the CTC taken in the past 60 days to work with the BoE towards better solutions for school capacity issues?
4. What actions will the CTC take in the next 60 days to represent the citizens of Cary in matters related to our children’s education?
5. Given WCPSS has stated that there are not enough seats for students, what are your administration’s plans to manage residential growth and avoid adding to the problem?

I have seen no public statements in the past few weeks from our Cary government which address any of these questions. In fact, I have seen no public statements on this subject at all.

Now is not the time to watch from the sidelines, we need to know what we can expect from our Cary Town leaders.

Joe Ciulla