“I know what you’re going through,” Don Frantz, council member for District B, told the crowd. Frantz and his wife have two children currently in the Wake County Public School System.

“Needless to say we’ve been reassigned over the years,” Frantz said. “I’m here to support you. I’m here to work hard.”

About 60 parents attended the rally, held in front of Town Hall, joined by council members Frantz, Gale Adcock and Erv Portman, as well as Mayor Pro Tem Julie Robison.

Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly and Board of Education member Ron Margiotta were also in attendance.

Margiotta, who represents Apex and a portion of south Cary, used his moment at the podium to put Cary parents on a bit of a guilt trip.

“I could challenge you guys and ask where you have been the last seven years,” Margiotta said to the crowd. “Your neighbors have needed you.”

Wake County’s current reassignment plan, presented to the Board of Education last Tuesday, potentially impacts 6,824 elementary students across the county. It helps fill two new elementary schools, Laurel Park and Mills Park in Cary and Apex and a third in north Raleigh. Reassignments are also being made to balace the percentage of students at each school receiving a free or reduced-rate lunch.

Many at the rally expressed an interest in seeing more neighborhood schools, meaning a school’s attendance area would include the surrounding community.

“It’s very frustrating. It almost makes you want to move out of Wake County,” said parent Kim Daeke, whose family would be reassigned from Oak Grove Elementary to Adams Elementary. “I think it’s a shame that you would want to be avoiding the public school system when the schools themselves are good.”

Saturday’s rally was the second protest held in Cary last week.

About 200 parents and students at Davis Drive Elementary walked to school to protest their potential reassignment to Laurel Park and Green Hope elementary schools.

Parent Tamara Burns said with the current reassignment proposal, many of the school’s PTA members would be moved elsewhere.

“They can make [the school] as diverse, economically, as they want to, but they can’t take our volunteer base away,” Burns said. “It’s going to ruin our school. We’re a family.”