U.S.D.A. Bans Wake County From Using School Lunch Data for ‘Diversity Busing’

The controversial policy of using socio-economic information to place students into schools in North Carolina ran into a brick wall last week when the U.S.D.A. blocked Wake County from using its data.

Department of Agriculture officials had informed Wake Country School District that it can not use confidential and private information from school lunch programs to re-assign students to other schools.

Without that data Wake County would either have to ask for parents to volunteer their income information or abandon the idea of forcing kids into schools outside of their neighborhoods solely based on how much money their parents make.

Wake County is one of the few remaining school districts to hold on to this backwards and ineffective policy, but the NAACP is going to do what it can to keep it in place. In a news release, the President of the North Carolina NAACP, Rev. Barber, announced that the NAACP has filed a federal complaint over the U.S.D.A. decision.

“The N.C. NAACP believes the USDA’s position regarding the use of Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) data in school assignment is a misinterpretation of the law,”

Barber has been a highly-visible personality at the forefront of the anti-neighborhood schools movement within the state.