Parents divided over Wake school board actions

I found this article in the Triangle Business Journal today and wanted to post it for you.

If Triangle Business Journal's latest online poll is any indication, the only thing that can divide Triangle residents as much as a Duke-Carolina game is controversy over where and when their kids will go to school.
From May 23 to May 29, visitors to TBJ's Web site were asked, "Are you satisfied with the way the Wake County School Board handled the controversy over year-round schools?"
During that time, 409 people responded to the poll. Fewer than half, or 194 (47 percent), said yes; a slightly smaller group, 175 people (42 percent), said no. Forty respondents, or 9 percent, responded, "I don't care."
The poll also generated a wealth of user comments, with respondents on both sides of the argument fired up. What follows is an edited sample of those comments, which were made anonymously:
"The school board botched this issue from the start. There's no doubt that the board faces tremendous challenges from our growth, but their attitude and indifference towards the parents and students is what fueled this fire. The parents didn't feel like the school board members truly listened or cared about their concerns. This whole situation could have been avoided with better communications, more listening and a willingness to discuss other alternatives."
"They have made the best of the untenable situation the public has handed them - huge growth and taxophobia."
"The school board basically blackmailed parents into choosing the year-round option by telling them which school they would attend year-round, but leaving it unknown if they chose a traditional school calendar. How is that fair? What would you do, given that choice? While the problems of school capacity are real, I think the school board has acted arrogantly in addressing this issue."
"I think the school board handled the situation with more grace than the opposing side. Memo to the lady who asks us every week in church to pray against year-round: Do you really think this issue is on God's radar?"
"The school board has acted in a totally callous and reprehensible manner. They have no respect for what citizens want and recklessly impose their views on parents. They had no reasonable contingency plan and put parents in a no-win position with their last-minute actions. If they were in private industry, they would all be fired."
"We had already resigned to/accepted the fact and prepared for the year-round conversion and got the track we requested. It's too bad a small group of inconvenienced mothers, i.e., WakeCares, couldn't adapt to the change like the rest of us!"
"We are victims of our own success. We knew growth was coming, but when we don't have impact fees for housing growth, we are going to be faced with either large tax increases or creative solutions for growth. Year-round schools are a creative solution to the growth problems we have."
"Very few citizens understand the complexity of the issues overcrowding and growth present to the school system every year. Take any business and tell the owner he is to expect 6,000-8,000 new customers every year for the next 10 or so years, and he can't refuse them service, and he has to ask the public for the money to serve them. See how he/she would do."