Wake schools seeks feedback on student assignment

Raleigh, N.C. — The Wake County Public School System is seeking feedback on how schools could be grouped under the district's new student assignment policy.

A set of sample maps were posted Thursday on the school system's website, along with lists of schools in each zone and charts that compare projected student enrollment in 2012-13 with the available school capacity in each zone of the appropriate map.

Comments will be accepted online through Aug. 29.

The school system's Growth and Planning Department presented the maps Tuesday to the school board's Student Assignment Committee, which is working to implement the new assignment model.

The goal will be to assign students to schools closer to their homes.

The current three-year model buses some students across the district to help balance the number of students at each school who receive free or reduced-price lunches.

School board members say the new plan, when in place, will provide stability to students who will no longer be moved from school to school and give parents more choices and involvement in their children's education.

Others are concerned, however, that the plan could prevent economically disadvantaged students from receiving the same quality of education, because the move would segregate schools, create pockets of poverty within the district and lead to high teacher turnover.

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rand321 is certainly correct. In a high denisty area-- land is certainly going to be cheaper than building a school in a rural area. They also have to consider the areas where they already have plans to build a new school or one is close to completion. Whatever they do-- the parents are going to realize that Wake County is growing and that there will have to be reassignments ever year. You cannot have a stable assignment when the population condinues to grow and new schools being constructed. I attended our neighborhood school and it was great. Only problem there were only two schools in our area. Elem school and high school. You either went to one or the other.

superman
August 2, 2010 10:25 a.m.

Nothing less than Neighborhood schools is acceptable.

End all busing for Socio-Economic diversity (race) based busing.

DontLikeTheSocialistObama
August 2, 2010 10:08 a.m.

Geez...is this subject ever going to die?? Why is there such a problem with children going to their neighborhood schools???? I went to MY neighborhood schools! How is this a problem?

Vietnam Vet
July 30, 2010 6:46 p.m.

the central zones, which look to be southeast raleigh, have the lowest capacity utilizations. they shoudl look at moving the lines from the cary, apex, morrisville, garner, wendell areas to add to the central zone for better utilizing their capacity.

rand321
July 30, 2010 6:28 p.m.

one of the top three requirement is to minimize changes. however, in reviewing the various capacities of schools under the various plans, many are at or over capacity or will soon be based on growth.

the board should also show the growth trends for the various zones (new census data) as well as birth rate trends. they then sshoudl also look at planned new homes, zoning for new homes and how does this match capacity projections? In trying to fufill the community school requirments,looking at it form a facility and resource overview, it would appear we are going to have some signficant building chanllenges. in some of the areas, is there enough empty land to build schools at a reasonable cost? to keep a new school in the right zone, would we expect to pay more for land?

if we are going to fulfill the criteria for the plan, future growth, planning and budget impacts must be a major part of this plan.

rand321
July 30, 2010 6:26 p.m.