For anyone in doubt about what happened in the Wake school board elections this month, the scene on the deck of the Eagle Ridge Country Club in Garner yesterday said it all. High above the putting green, on a sparkling blue-skies day when the golf-club homes at Eagle Ridge were looking their very best, the top three candidates for the District 2 board seat -- Republicans all -- made their peace under the benevolent gaze of Wake Republican Party Chair Claude Pope. Horace Tart, the incumbent, hadn't toed the party line against "busing." So he was out, a badly beaten third on October 6, and he came to this event with a game but dazed look on his face. Cathy Truitt, the educator, finished second and called for a runoff, then withdrew in the apparent belief that her expertise would be better-recognized if she stepped aside. I say apparent because Truitt simultaneously withdrew and continued to campaign (at considerable length) for her "diversity with choices" platform. She did so on Monday, Tuesday, and again yesterday, when she endorsed the winner, John Tedesco, but was loathe to hand him the microphone until she'd explained why he should make her his "education adviser." For his part, Tedesco was magnanimous and low-key, but he made it clear -- as Pope nodded with approval -- that the new school board majority is "committed to getting to a community schools model."
Tedesco's use of the term "community schools" is meant to convey a different image than the "neighborhood schools" platform on which the Wake GOP has stood for lo these many years. I wrote about it some in this week'd Indy. Truitt, too, has a picture in her mind of how the neighborhood-schools concept can be made to work in Wake without leading to the resegregation of the system. She made the comment Monday that the neighborhood-schools folks knew what they were against ("forced busing") but hadn't really reflected on what it is they want. Maybe. But standing on that country club deck, I couldn't help but think that the voters in Eagle Ridge, like their counterparts in the better parts of Holly Springs, Apex, Cary, North Raleigh, and Wake Forest, know exactly what they want. They want their own schools.
No, it's more than that.
They want the best schools in Wake County, and they're pretty sure they can have them -- can take them away from center-city Raleigh, that is -- if they can just be allowed to function without interference from their Inside the Beltline neighbors.
