Despite calls from the Forsyth County Association of Educators and the NAACP to cancel a workshop with the Civitas Institute of Raleigh, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education voted 5-3 Tuesday night to co-sponsor a budget workshop with the conservative group next month.
Board members Geneva Brown, Vic Johnson and Elisabeth Motsinger voted against the proposal. Chairman Donny Lambeth and board members Jill Tackabery, Jeannie Metcalf, Jane Goins and Buddy Collins voted in favor of the measure.
Board member Marilyn Parker did not attend the meeting.
On its website, the John W. Pope Civitas Institute calls itself "North Carolina's Conservative Voice." Civitas supports limited government, personal responsibility and civic engagement.
Bob Luebke, a senior policy analyst and coordinator of school board training for Civitas, had said that his organization liked the idea of having the event in Winston-Salem because it's centrally located for many school systems.
Lambeth said Civitas will not have a speaker on the program. The three speakers are Phil Price, chief finance officer for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction; Kerry Crutchfield, retired director of finance for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools; and Terry Stoops, director of education studies at the conservative John Locke Foundation.
Seven people spoke against the workshop, which will be open to school board members throughout the region. Board members are not required to attend, and Brown said Tuesday night that she does not plan to be there.
Stephen Hairston, a former president of the local NAACP, called Civitas an extreme right-wing organization and told the board that if it believes in representing all of the residents of the county, there is no way it should allow the group in.
Tackabery said before the meeting that she doesn't agree with everything Stoops says but that she didn't feel that the sort of budget information that would be presented would have to have an ideological focus.
"I'm much more focused on the presenters and the material," she said.
She said people who object to Civitas are not giving board members credit for having the intelligence to discern useful information from ideology.
Wayne Patterson, president of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County branch of the NAACP said in a statement that Civitas is a divisive and regressive group and that it has supported efforts to re-segregate, disinvest and privatize public schools in North Carolina, particularly in Wake County.
"The Civitas Institute will undoubtedly advise the school board to cut the budget on the backs of the poor and minority students and families in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system," he said.
Motsinger said she didn't see any advantages for the school system being associated with Civitas. She said the group could put the workshop on its website and say it's providing guidance to school board members.
She doesn't have a problem with people having opinions different from hers, Motsinger said, but if a representative from the conservative John Locke Foundation is speaking at the workshop, N.C. Policy Watch or some other group should be invited for balance.
John Dornan, with the Public School Forum of North Carolina, had been asked to speak at the workshop. He withdrew after learning that Civitas was co-sponsoring the event.
"While I believe in a free exchange of ideas and respect the right of any would-be think tank, be it Civitas or the Public School Forum, to hold views contrary to my own, I do not agree with Civitas when it comes to their stance on public schools and would not knowingly help them advance their views," he said in an e-mail sent to school-board members in January.
Ann Petitjean, who was representing the Forsyth County Association of Educators, said that after spending time on the Civitas website, she had deep concerns. None of the education issues Civitas supports appear to increase money for public schools, she said.
The board doesn't need the sort of help Civitas offers, she said.
mgiunca@wsjournal.com
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