Summary
Stan Norwalk's got a chart he likes to show off. It compares the bond issues the Wake school board's asked for over the years with what actually went on the ballot when the county commissioners-under conservative leadership-finished cutting them. The billion-dollar gap in between, plus the failure of the then-record $938 million bond in '99, is why Wake's so far in the hole today, Norwalk says, and why it will need another $4 billion to $5 billion over the next decade, on top of last year's $970 million, to keep up with the county's explosive growth.
Wake's big system isn't bad, it's first-rate, Norwalk says, and keeping it that way is crucial to Wake County's ability to remain prosperous in the global and knowledge-based economy. Which means not putting kids in cinderblock buildings and not eliminating "frills" like band, foreign languages or Advanced Placement courses. As evidence, he points to the report of the commissioners' own Blue-Ribbon Committee on the Future of Wake County, the business-dominated group that last year called it "one of the best public school systems in the country, and plays a key role in this region's economic development efforts."That's roughly $200 million a year, Norwalk says, enough to support a $2 billion bond issue without increasing property taxes at all, Norwalk says. Based on the campaigning he did as part of the Friends of Wake County committee for the '06 bond issue, he thinks that's what it will take before voters will pass another one anytime soon. "This last one was hard-slogging all the way, even with a very well-run and well-funded campaign. I think the next one's got a good chance of failing, whether it's in 2007, '08 or '09."See the full content of this document
Extract
Breaking Point
After seven hard years on the Wake County Board of Education, not much surprises Beverley Clark, or angers her either, for that matter. Still, when a reporter called her on a Saturday night in January to say that the Wake County Commissioners, fresh from a retreat, wanted to put another $1 billion school construction bond issue on the ballot in October, on top of the $970 million bond that had just passed, she was staggered. "I absolutely was," Clark says. "I was totally blown away. I had no idea it was coming, because-there hadn't been any communication, and I don't understand, we've really been working together...."
But Clark's not sure how much more she wants to say, or how directly she wants to condemn what the commissioners did. Following a year of unusually good relations between her board and theirs, marked by no fights in the press and a shared campaign that got that first bond issue passed, all of a sudden the commissioners were going their own way and trying to make the school board look bad. Or so it seemed."The other day," Clark begins again, "a neighbor of mine said to me, 'I've been a Republican ...See the full content of this document
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