An Open Letter from a Jilted Admirer
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Dear Debra Goldman: For about 36 hours, I was in love with you, and I carried around in my head the letter I planned to write you. A love letter, to be sure, but don't worry -- my wife was in on the whole thing, and she was just as besotted with you as I was. Here's why: you had admitted that the Wake County School Board majority of which you are a part had left reason behind in its headlong rush to dismantle the Wake schools' diversity policy. "I need to eyeball this more," the Feb. 25 News & Observer quoted you saying. "Especially when the policy has such major implications." My wife and I swooned. Someone in power, with control over a highly politicized, deeply important issue that would have unimaginably important -- and highly unpredictable -- consequences, saying, "Whoa -- let's just take a moment to think this thing through." We overtly rejoiced. "A decent person," we said. "A woman willing to think long and hard about the consequences her actions would have, not take precipitate action because it just feels better to act." Not for you the surly partisanship of Ron Margiotta, the shocking, "those people," screw-you ranting of John Tedesco. This was you, a decent woman -- a parent, of magnet school children no less -- admitting to one and all that these questions are extremely complex and we shouldn't rush to kick over the work of decades. It's easy to wreck something; building something takes a long time and a lot of work. Your words seemed to indicate you understood this. My wife and I talked about it all day Friday -- we planned a letter, an invitation, some sort of appreciation to someone who has our children's future in her hands and was willing to think hard about that future rather than rush to a decision hewing to some line that in a let's-pretend world neatly solves the problems as she perceives them. We wanted to have you over for dinner. We were at that moment signing our oldest up for kindergarten. For the first time in months we believed that by the time he was in fifth grade he -- or, just as bad, other kids his age -- might not be faced with trying to make the best of a system peppered with schools completely filled with kids from troubled families. For the moment leave out that we are on the opposite side of most issues from you and what the paper keeps calling the "new majority" of the board; leave out that we believe, like many others, that "neighborhood schools" is a code that only in that let's-pretend world doesn't mean "separate but equal," which, let's face it, we tried once before. Leave out that your "new majority," running on a perfectly legitimate criticism that the previous board was arrogant, has behaved arrogantly: asking for studies of new school sitings, then throwing out the results when they didn't suit your opinions; asking for a countywide survey about your fundamental claims, then throwing out the survey results when they didn't suit your opinions. And leave out that while you and the other new board members were legitimately elected and should legitimately serve, you seem to have completely lost track of the fact that you were elected by a tiny minority of voters and thus only in that let's-pretend world can claim the right to the kind of precipitate action that overwhelming majority supports. And leave out that if you didn't wish to act arrogantly you could not fail to see that when the five-member majority all represent districts from the ring surrounding the major city and the four-member minority all represent districts constituting the major city, there's nothing like a broad agreement among the population, and so you should not take major action without debate, compromise, and consideration. Without at the very least a survey of the constituency. Of course, you actually did survey your constituency -- and the constituents told you loud and clear that they do not agree with your position. Did I mention that? So I thought your reasonable comments indicated that you realized that. That you realized that taking major action requires major thought and that you were going to give it major thought. For one minute, instead of "I was elected, so I'll do what I want because I can, so get over it!" You said, "This is complex -- let's take a breath." And so my wife and I loved you and wanted to support you. We wanted you over for dinner. We wanted to help you think this matter through, introduce you to the people who had helped us think it through when we first faced a system that wanted to bus our precious child to a school farther away than two schools to which he could walk. To the people who helped us understand why it was so important that the system be able to do that. Our love affair lasted something short of 36 hours. By the time we went to bed on Friday night we were hearing that you were back in bed with your friends, for whom thinking does not appear to be a hobby. And that Wake County is back on the rails towards policies that have failed everywhere they've been tried. And we're back to trying to figure out how a mother of magnet school children can say to the children of other magnets, "You'll have to get by with less, because I don't want my kid in a bus." It's about, as you guys like to say, community. "People are going to know the schools in their community," you said in the N&O on Feb. 27. For the past decades, Wake County has worked hard to be one community, and if that meant some bus rides we were willing to put up with that to prevent the terrible problems that come with ripping a community into pieces. You've apparently decided that your community ends somewhere in Cary, which is why you're willing to let the high-poverty parts of Wake County go it alone -- they're not part of your community. Well, they're part of mine, and we'll be sorry to miss you in our community. But when the high-poverty schools lead to ruined neighborhoods, and the ruined neighborhoods lead to the kind of business catastrophe that ruined neighborhoods cause, and when that business catastrophe has the kind of repercussions to the surrounding suburbs that it always does, you'll be long gone and your kids will have graduated. It took us decades to get things so close to right, and it will take years for everyone to see how close to wrong you're leading us. So anyhow, this letter already sounds like the frustrated grumblings of every jilted suitor, and I won't go on much longer. I'm sorry you don't think we live in the same community, and I'm sorry that you don't think taking a minute to try to work something out that would suit everyone is worth doing. I'm sorry for an awful lot of things, but I've finally learned: You're not listening. Just the same, I'll be honest with you -- I'm not sorry we're not having you over for dinner. I think you would have thought the ride over was just too long.
Posted by Scott Huler
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