Fitzsimon File

The forces determined to dismantle public schools in North Carolina opened up a new front in their attack Tuesday, bringing a national speaker to Raleigh who urged the federal government to reject the state’s bid for $400 million in federal money as part of the Obama’s Administration’s Race to the Top education initiative.

That’s money desperately needed as the state faces more budget problems this spring after slashing funds for public schools last year to help address a $4.6 billion shortfall.

Todd Ziebarth with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools made the plea at a news conference at the Legislative Building held by Parents for Educational Freedom, a North Carolina-based group that wants to privatize public schools with vouchers and tuition tax credits.

Tuesday was the deadline for states to submit their applications for Race to the Top money, a program designed to encourage innovation and accountability in public schools. The original guidelines for the program included an emphasis on states loosening restrictions on charter schools, prompting speculation that North Carolina’s charter school cap would make it unlikely the state would receive funding.

But modifications to the guidelines encouraged state officials and Governor Beverly Perdue submitted the state’s application this past weekend.

That didn’t stop the Alliance and the Parents for Educational Freedom from using the occasion to demand that lawmakers lift the cap and provide charter schools with more funding. Senator Larry Shaw called for a special session to lift the cap.

Former Charlotte Mayor and Republican Gubernatorial candidate Richard Vinroot joined the call for increased support for charters and claimed the schools are not even getting the funding they deserve under the current law.

Vinroot, a board member of a charter school in Charlotte, has taken several school districts to court to demand the funding he says the law requires.  The law is the law Vinroot says and he wants it enforced to make sure charters get the money they are due.

He didn’t mention another part of the state charter school law that requires all the schools to “reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the general population residing within the local school administrative unit in which the school is located.”

Many charter schools violate that law every day and have since the state approved the creation of charter schools in 1995. The law apparently, is not always the law.

There are well-intentioned, though misguided people of all political stripes who support charter schools, but Tuesday’s press conference wasn’t really about that, despite the press release and all the talk about Race to the Top.

Parents for Educational Freedom doesn’t just want more charter schools in North Carolina. It wants to end public schools as we know them.

It’s not a surprise that the group, like the new majority of resegregationists on the Wake County Board of Education, has close ties to Art Pope and the conservative anti-government think tank world he bankrolls. One of the original members of the board was the attorney for Pope’s business enterprises.

There are plenty of problems to fix in North Carolina’s public schools, but lawmakers need to make sure they understand who really wants to fix them and who wants to use the problems to dismantle the system entirely as part of an anti-government ideological crusade.

Standing with someone who wants North Carolina to lose $400 million in the middle of the worst economic crisis in a generation is a pretty clear indicator of which side you are on.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.