North Carolina Leader Addresses Resegregation of Public Schools

The Raleigh News and Observer reported today on North Carolina NAACP leader Rev. William Barber’s call for state education officials to discourage local school districts from allowing schools to resegregate.

"Segregation is a barrier to equal education opportunities," Barber said. "Segregation is a barrier to a sound basic education."

Barber noted that nearly all of the state's 44 lowest-performing high schools have predominantly minority enrollments and cope with numerous educational disadvantages, including fewer fully licensed teachers, fewer teachers with graduate degrees or national certification, and higher rates of teacher turnover.

Resegregation is a problem across the South, resulting from waning focus on the issue of racial diversity in public schools.

He cited Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greensboro and Goldsboro, where schools have resegregated in recent years as local school leaders have moved away from student assignment policies that helped maintain diversity.

"Within these large, wealthy districts," he said, "the best teachers and the students who are graduating and going on to college and planning to lead the world are in predominantly white, predominantly affluent schools."

Barber has asked that the Attorney general’s office step into the matter. Historically, larger, central government has fomented change on issues of race. Public schools are still predominantly controlled by local governments.

He also urged the board to ask the state Attorney General's Office to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case that will reconsider the use of race in school assignments.
"We don't want the Supreme Court to overturn the 1954 Brown decision," Barber said.

Board Chairman Howard Lee said that the board would consider Barber's request but that he would not favor overstepping the authority of local school boards.