The WakeCARES Fuck-up

The idiocy of the American public has hit again, this time with damaging affects throughout the county. WakeCARES has decided, in all its infinite wisdom, that new Apex residents are MUCH smarter than any Wake County resident has ever been. The group that 3 Apex "soccer moms" has started managed to sue the School Board, trying to block the mandatory conversion of 22 schools to year round calenders. They were just lucky enough to get a judge who is big into changing the school system (Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/1061/story/207966.html). Judge Manning Jr. ruled for WakeCARES, who has a whopping, grand total of 10% of the parents in Wake County (Source: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?SOSWAKE1). 10%. Thats all it takes? I would think that it would take at least 25% for the problem to even be considered. But of course anyone can win in the courts. What boggles the mind is, what makes these three moms, who just moved into the county, think that they can sue the school system to stop a change that NEEDS to be made? And with the support of only 10% of the parents in the system at that! Can you really be that delusional?

Lets just weigh in some of the facts shall we?

North Carolina has the 13th lowest property taxes. That is the tax that puts money into education.
Wake County is ranked 524 out of 775 counties in percentage property tax based on income.
(Above stats, courtesy of the Tax Foundation
Wake Country is 11 out of all school districts in the country in enrollment growth (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/bbecho00/table5.html)

Hmm. Lets see. 13th lowest property taxes..... 11th fastest growing? Anyone ELSE see a problem with that? Obviously something has to be done. God forbid they raise taxes, our children arn't THAT important. If we did that, one of them might beat out the current people and then where would we be? Probably better off than we are now but the people we have now would be out of a job, and we certainly can't let that happen. So obviously the only option is to do Mandatory Year-Round conversions. But wait. They can't do that now. WakeCARES says so. Oh well I guess we just get to either do the split scheduling and let students goto school from 1:30-7 every day... Or just shove an extra 10 children in every classroom and hope that fixes it. As many people have said now, I really feel sorry for the School Board. But not really, because they got themselves into this on their own. Maybe if the people had voted on the nice big cushy bond to begin with............. (Oh wait, we couldn't do that either. WakeCARES said so.)