RALEIGH -- In the first detailed step toward neighborhood schools in Wake County, school administrators got marching orders Tuesday to begin drawing up new assignment zones that no longer include long-distance forced busing for diversity.
The school board's student assignment committee told staff to divide the county into an undetermined number of zones with compact attendance boundaries that would allow students to go to schools near where they live.
The new zones would end Wake's long-standing practice of sending thousands of low-income Southeast Raleigh and downtown Raleigh students to schools in places such as North Raleigh and western Wake to promote diversity.
"We're telling families they can go to schools in their communities," said school board member John Tedesco, chairman of the student assignment committee.
But some community members of the committee warned that the change would crowd schools and take away magnet seats. Many of Wake's 33 magnet schools are in Southeast Raleigh and downtown Raleigh.
"Do we want to reduce the number of magnet seats?" asked Anne Cooper, a committee member and a supporter of the old diversity policy.
Tuesday's action was the latest step by the new school board majority to move Wake toward neighborhood schools. Last month, the board eliminated references to socioeconomic diversity in the student assignment policy and instead made a priority of assigning students to schools close to their homes.
A resolution adopted in March gave the school board nine to 15 months to develop a new community-based schools plan.
The committee on Tuesday told staff to build the zones around high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed them. This initial grouping would largely leave many of Wake's 140,000 students going to the same schools after the new zones are adopted.
School planners have this starting point to create community student assignment zones: Wake now has 23 high schools, including one campus which is divided into four separate schools.
But the committee's direction that the zones be clustered around close-to-home schools means changes would be in store for the students now assigned to faraway schools for diversity reasons.
Anne Sherron, a community member of the committee who supported the old diversity policy, argued that moving the Southeast Raleigh students goes against the idea of trying to limit how many families are affected by the new assignment model.
"Stability is where you're at today," Sherron said.
But Tedesco argued that the new majority would move far fewer than the 24,000 students slated to be reassigned in the three-year plan adopted last year by the old board.
Tedesco also stressed that he'd want to phase in the new assignments over several years. Changes likely wouldn't begin being made until the 2012-13 school year.
He acknowledged that sending more inner-city students back to schools in their neighborhoods could increase the percentages of neighborhood children at magnet schools. Magnet programs were originally designed to offer uniqueclasses to lure affluent, suburban students to schools in areas that had high poverty or low enrollment.
But Tedesco said the combination of new schools opening in Southeast Raleigh and the creation of new magnet programs could mean there's no overall reduction in the number of magnet seats.
Ron Margiotta, the school board chairman, has also proposed operating magnet schools on a year-round calendar to increase the number of students who can attend.
Tedesco said the staff could have some initial maps back to the committee as soon as July.
