Wake school board adopts reassignment plan

Raleigh, N.C. — The Wake County Board of Education voted 6-2 Tuesday in favor of a plan that will reassign 24,654 students over the next three years.

The plan is driven by the district's growth and decisions about how to fill 10 new schools, including three year-round elementary schools this year.

The plan, which the Wake County Public School System plans to post on its Web site by Monday, assumes funding for the new schools will still be available next year. If budget troubles change that, the board can modify the plan.

Board members Beverly Clark and Ron Margiotta voted against the proposal.

At a number of public hearings held over the past eight months, hundreds of parents spoke against the plan.

"Our board members and staff listened closely to hours of comments, read thousands of e-mail suggestions and discussed the best use of our schools in our business of learning and teaching," Wake schools Superintendent Del Burns said in a news release.

As it stands, the plan moves about 2,900 fewer students than previous draft proposals would have moved, and more than 11,000 students are eligible for a relaxed grandfathering policy, which school members made to accommodate families.

Under the grandfathering policy, families who have been reassigned twice in three years may apply for a "transfer" to stay at their current schools, and those will be granted automatically.

For families who have two or more children at the same school and the older sibling is being reassigned, they can apply for a similar "transfer" back to where they are now, and that would be approved and automatically extended for the younger siblings so they can stay at the same school.

School system staff say they are able to be more flexible because growth projections have dropped and more schools have opened.

Approximately 4,000 of the students affected are not in the school system but are expected to enroll during the next three years. More than 1,400 are kindergarten students who will enroll and will be assigned to schools other than the ones to which their houses are assigned now.