Parents howl, reassignments cut

Outcry prompts Wake schools to cut plan to move 26,771 students in 3 years to 25,486

RALEIGH -- Intense public lobbying helped shrink the size of a plan that calls for moving more than 25,000 Wake County students to different schools over the next three years.

Parents bombarded school administrators with 4,165 online comments, while school board members got e-mail messages and phone calls to protest a draft plan released last month that would have moved 26,771 students.

The complaints led to changes in a revised plan released Tuesday that now calls for moving 25,486 students. Based on current enrollment, that's the rough equivalent to one out of six students in the state's largest school district.

Changes were still being made to the plan just hours before it was presented to the school board. Last-minute revisions mean the full plan won't be available online at www.wcpss.net until Saturday.

"A draft is a draft," Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning, said of the earlier proposal. "It's our first set of ideas for the plan. It's not our official recommendation."

Dulaney said some changes were made because data were typed incorrectly into the draft. He said other changes were made because the public suggested better options, such as moving areas along North Harrison Avenue back to Cary High instead of to Athens Drive High.

Dulaney also said some changes were made because of the school board's decision last week to remove the magnet program at Broughton High School and to start one at Millbrook High School. That effort was led by families who objected to being reassigned out of Broughton to make room for magnet students.

Wake splits the county into attendance areas called nodes. You can find your node by looking online at www.wcpss.net.

Some other changes from last month's draft include:

* Not reassigning students from attendance nodes 91, 124, 131, 159 and 160 from Broughton to Sanderson High School.

* Reassigning to Broughton all the nodes that were originally going to move from Panther Creek High School to Leesville Road High School.

* Reassigning only nodes 245.5, 324.2 and 337.3 from Leesville Road to Millbrook High School, significantly less than originally proposed.

* Not reassigning nodes 657.1 and 657.2 from Green Hope High School to Cary.

* Not reassigning students from Apex High School to Cary.

The changes were cheered by at least one parent.

Monty Coleman said she was "thrilled" her daughter, Tess, president of Apex High School's freshman class, won't be transferred to Cary after all.

"We're glad they really took a good look at it and saw it didn't make sense," Coleman said. "It wasn't we were against Cary High, but we can see the football stadium lights at Apex High from our house."

The release of the official plan marks the next phase of an annual cycle. Wake reassigns thousands of students each year to fill new schools, ease crowding at existing schools and promote diversity.

This year, for the first time, officials are trying to project reassignments three years ahead. By telling families where their children will attend classes through 2012, school officials hope to provide a greater sense of stability.

However, the long-range plans are built on a couple of premises.

First, administrators assume that 10 schools scheduled to open by 2012 won't be delayed because of the fiscal crunch. Because of the difficulty selling bonds, county officials have warned school leaders they'll need to check monthly whether there is enough money to pay for construction projects.

Second, the plan assumes the school district will win a lawsuit that ends the need to get parental permission to assign students to year-round schools. The state Supreme Court heard the case Tuesday.

If the school district loses the case, administrators said they'll need to change the second and third years of the plan.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the plan Feb. 3.

"Now the process begins for the community to speak on our official set of recommendations," Dulaney said.