The new Gang of Five Majority on the Wake County Board of Education determined to resegregate the nationally acclaimed school system turned back into the Gang of Four and a Half Wednesday, once again pausing in its ideological drive to divide the system into rich schools and poor schools.

In the wake of the resignation of Superintendent Del Burns, who wants no part of reversing the progress of the last 30 years, the board's policy committee declined to approve a motion by Gang of Fiver Chris Malone to abolish the schools diversity policy.

Malone's motion hung in the air waiting for a second before committee chair and increasingly reluctant Gang of Fiver Debra Goldman said she wasn't happy with the wording of the proposal and that it deserved more consideration.

The committee eventually agreed to hold a working session to explore possible changes to the assignment policy and Goldman called for committee members and school staff to gather the relevant research data to make an informed decision.

That's an encouraging development. Education research overwhelmingly shows that students perform better in diverse environments, as Board member Kevin Hill pointed out during the meeting.

But any optimism that reality might nudge its way past the resegregationist ideology is tempered by the glaring omission from Wednesday's discussion of maybe the most relevant data of all, that 94.5 percent of parents who responded to a recent board survey say they are satisfied with their child's school.

That fact alone ought to give every member of the Gang of Five pause, but even Goldman continues to ignore it, at point Wednesday asking why the board should keep the diversity policy in place when "so many people are so unhappy."

Gang of Five leader John Tedesco, who now admits that his rich zone, poor zone plan that has made him a media darling would create high poverty, resegregated schools, is not a member of the policy committee but came to be part of the discussion anyway.

Tedesco defends his plan to create more poor schools by pointing out the system already has some, as growth and demographic changes in the county have made it more difficult to maintain economic balance.

His solution is to give up and create schools that are even more overwhelmingly poor and segregated, forcing the parents of the few middle class students left in them to flee.

He just wants to throw more money at them, though he can't say how much, a vital piece of information given the current budget crisis and the Gang of Five's recent vote to waste $15 million by abandoning a proposed site of a new high school.

Tedesco has already compared the school system to the Titanic, which makes no sense. Wednesday he said it was like Toyota, which doesn't fit either unless maybe he meant the board's new majority is like the carmaker, with its ideological accelerator stuck, endangering the well-being of the school system and the 140,000 students in it.

Goldman's reservations about speeding ahead are not sitting too well with the right-wing anti-public school crowd so instrumental in the Gang of Five's election last fall. Dallas Woodhouse of Americans for the Prosperous described it as a nightmare that people have seen before, where school board members don't do what they promised during the campaigns.

The real nightmare is a school board majority that rejects any thoughtful debate or consideration of any evidence that contradicts the rigid right-wing dogma that would dismantle public schools and set Wake County back 40 years.

Wednesday’s step back from that resegregationist brink is a small, but important move in the right direction.