It’s nothing new when someone learns after it’s too late that a change in the law or a new government policy is going to have a negative effect on them.

Government meetings are not usually well-attended, even at the local level. At the state level it’s even more unlikely people will be aware of all that’s going on in the Legislative Building on Jones Street.

But one bill working its way through the Legislature should catch the attention of every eastern Wake County resident before it become law.

House Bill 302 would change the way members of the Wake County Board of Education are elected.

Instead of electing nine members from single-member districts, the proposal would create five districts and four at-large seats. The net effect of such a change would be to give voters in larger cities a greater say in who sits on the Board of Education.

Under the current system, each of the nine board members live in their district and are elected by voters in that district.

The push to change the system is an effort by parents dissatisfied with the way the county deals with reassignment.

Many of the residents in Wake County’s larger muncipalities moved here from other places and they came with an expectation that their children would attend the schools closest to their home.

As more students flood the school system each year and new schools are constructed, the need to fill those schools requires students be shuffled. Parents in eastern Wake County are dealing with the effects of reassignment with the opening of the new Lake Myra Elementary School next year.

If legislators bow to the pressure by the parents in other parts of Wake County, they will ensure that eastern Wake County is perpetually underrepresented on the Board of Education.

Parents in eastern Wake County need to be equally vocal about their opposition to the bill as other parents are in their support. If residents in Wendell, Knightdale and Zebulon sit idly by they will find themselves without representation on the Board of Education. And they will wonder why this part of the county continues to be the breeding ground for Wake County’s educational problems for years to come.