To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

RALEIGH – Four protestors that were arrested for staging a sit-in at a Wake County school board meeting have vowed to continue their fight against the school board's elimination of the diversity policy.

Meanwhile, members of the school board say the protests won't stop them from what they're doing.

Rev. Nancy Petty is the senior pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. Her arrest after staging the sit-in was a first for her, but she doesn't regret it.

"What's at stake for me is what we're teaching our children about how we are to live together as a community," she said. "I think the actions the school board are taking right now also diminishes our community in general."

Petty joined Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, as well as two other protestors who were arrested and other supporters on Wednesday at her church to announce their pledge to keep protesting until the Wake County school board reinstates the diversity policy. The group is also planning to organize meetings, forums, demonstrations and student marches in the coming months. NAACP lawyers have hinted at legal action as well.

"What the school board has done has not discouraged us," Barber said. "It has actually galvanized us."

School board member John Tedesco said Tuesday's protests also served to galvanize him and some of his board colleagues.

"To see some of these naysayers in this way, it made me say we must be doing the right thing for some of these people with their political agenda to be hitting this hard in this way," he said.

Tedesco added that protests won't change what has happened, and the policy of using socioeconomic diversity in student assignments is dead.

"The trend line for some of our high-poverty schools were climbing under that policy," he said. "It wasn't helping our community. It wasn't helping to even meet its own intended goals, more or less, keeping our families in stable assignments."

Meanwhile, Petty, who has two children in Wake County schools, said she plans to continue fighting the changes with the backing of her church's leadership and many in her congregation.

"I feel very supported," she said. "I always know there are going to be critics out there, and I'm always glad to listen to my critics. But I feel strongly on this issue. It is an issue of my conscience, and I will follow through on that."

The four protestors arrested on Tuesday were released with a promise to show up for their court hearing in July. Each of them were issued a different date because they had different arresting officers, so the NAACP is working to try to get them all the same court date in front of the same judge.

School administrators will also have to discuss how to handle matters if the four return to school board meetings. Three activists who were arrested at the March 23 meeting have been banned from school property and risk being arrested if they return.