Wake leaders unveil proposed 2022-23 enrollment plan reassigning students at several school

The district will present a second draft based on feedback in November. A final vote is currently planned for Dec. 7.

Posted 10:01 p.m. Oct 5, 2021 — Updated 6:58 p.m. Oct 14, 2021

Emily Walkenhorst

, WRAL education reporter

CARY, N.C. — Student reassignment in the Wake County Public School System for next year will, as it often does, revolve around new schools opening, reducing overcrowding at existing schools and increasing enrollment at “under-utilized” schools.

Reassignments under the school district’s first draft of the 2022-23 school assignment plan would largely send students to schools closer to them.

That was the emphasis of Office of Student Assignment Senior Director Glenn Carrozza’s 113-slide presentation to the Wake County Board of Education at the board’s work session Tuesday afternoon.

The district will present a second draft based on feedback in November. A final vote is currently planned for Dec. 7.

The district will receive and respond to feedback online before the board adopts a final enrollment plan for the 2022-23 school year.

On the current enrollment timeline, eligible families could request their children stay at their current school from Dec. 13 through Jan. 2, via a Stability Transfer request that would forfeit bus transportation to school. Online pre-registration for all schools begins Oct. 15.

People can see how they might be impacted by the proposed enrollment plan using the district’s address lookup tool here.

The school system will open two new elementary schools and a middle school next year. Those will be the only new schools for the next two years.

The base areas affected by the elementary schools are largely near the county’s western border, in Apex and far west Raleigh. For the new middle school, attendance areas around Fuquay-Varina will be affected.

The new Apex Friendship Elementary School will primarily impact Olive Chapel and Scotts Ridge elementary schools, which are both over capacity. The schools will continue to be over capacity once the new school opens but at a significantly lower rate than projected. Carrozza said about 500 students have already been capped out of Olive Chapel Elementary.

Several base areas would be affected by the opening of Barton Pond Elementary School in west Raleigh.

Fuquay-Varina and Holly Grove middle schools — both over capacity — would be primarily impacted by the opening of Herbert Akins Road Middle School.

Both new elementary schools will be on a traditional calendar, and the new middle school will have a multi-track calendar.

The district also identified several existing schools for some changes to their base neighborhoods that would impact several dozen students or fewer at each school.

Those proposals for existing schools can be found in the presentation, on slides 23 through 71, here.

The proposals for the new schools are on slides 8 through 19.

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