Across the country, public education is under attack. The number of for-profit charter schools has increased while teachers' unions are being dismantled and budget shortfalls have put hundreds of thousands of education jobs in jeopardy. In Wake County, the new school board majority -- dubbed the "Resegregationist 5" by critics -- have been using race as an issue to distract and divide the public. Their real goal is to weaken and dismantle the nationally-acclaimed Wake County school system in order to make charter schools more attractive. The new board majority may seem like they are "fulfilling campaign promises" with their push for neighborhood schools but it is a ploy to create massively over-crowded schools in both poor and rich neighborhoods.

Art Pope and Bob Luddy were the two largest campaign contributors in the October 2009 school board election. Pope is the North Carolina state head of Americans for Prosperity, a far-right advocacy group, and uses AFP and his vast array of right-wing media to promote charter schools and urge North Carolina to lift its cap on the number of charters in the state. Bob Luddy runs three private schools in Wake County and a charter school in Franklin County. He has stated he wishes to build a network of 25 to 50 schools in Wake County based on his Thales Academy in Apex (of which school board chairman Ron Margiotta is on the board of trustees).

Both men provided a combined $38,000 to get their Republican candidates elected. But that sum is chump change compared to the financial rewards Luddy would reap if his schools were approved for charter status. Consider: if the new board majority approved just one of Luddy's schools as a charter, under current NC per-pupil spending, a school with 300 students would receive over $2 million in taxpayer money -- YOUR money -- every year.

It's not about race. It's not about diversity. It's about money. 93.5% of 40,000 Wake County parents surveyed felt they were satisfied with the quality of their child's education. My goal is to obtain 21,670 signatures -- one more than the total who voted the new board majority into office in October and the November runoff election. Sign this petition and let's get these Republican clowns as far away from our schools as possible.