Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2010

Johnston County NAACP leader arrested at Wake school board meeting

Timothy Hodges, president of the Johnston County chapter of the NAACP, said he wasn't surprised when he got arrested at a Wake school board meeting last week.

But Hodges, 54, said he felt obligated to speak out against the Wake school board's plan to ditch its longstanding diversity policy.

Hodges, who lives in Clayton and ran unsuccessfully for Johnston's school board, was among 16 people arrested at the July 20 meeting in Raleigh. He said he will face a judge next month on a charge of trespassing, a misdemeanor. He is accused of disrupting the board meeting.

He had hoped he wouldn't get arrested, Hodges said, but he added that he doesn't regret his decision to take part in the protest. He had taken part in a march through downtown Raleigh earlier that day.

"They're trying to separate the rich from the poor," Hodges said of the new school board majority.

The board is moving toward neighborhood schools instead of continuing the school system's practice of busing students to balance socioeconomic factors at schools. Some critics say the change will create segregated schools in Wake.

At the July 20 meeting, board chairman Ron Margiotta vowed that sending students to schools closer to home would not create high-poverty schools.

Hodges said he worries, though, that high-poverty schools are inevitable under the change. Often, he said, children at poor schools get poor educations, leading to low-paying jobs that keep them in the low-income neighborhoods where they began.

It's a cycle of poverty, Hodges said. "The only way to break it is through education," he said.

Hodges said he spent three or four hours in jail on July 20. When he went before a magistrate, he agreed to not attend more Wake school board meetings.

That's an agreement he will stick to, Hodges said.

The Rev. William Barber, the state NAACP leader, and the Rev. Nancy Petty, senior pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, were arrested for a second time July 20 when they stepped on school grounds after they were barred from doing so.

Hodges said he hasn't ruled out the possibility of trying again for a spot on the Johnston school board. In Johnston, most students attend schools closest to their homes.

"I felt very affected by it," Hodges said of the Wake school board's proposal for neighborhood schools. "It was just a matter of conscience."