Draft Wake County assignment plan does little on school diversity

Wake County’s newest draft student assignment plan is tightly focused on filling three new schools, continuing the district’s trend away from aggressively trying to move students around to promote diverse school enrollments.

Most of the neighborhoods targeted in the first draft of the 2017-18 student assignment plan would be moved to fill the new River Bend Middle and Rogers Lane Elementary in Raleigh and the new Hortons Creek Elementary in Cary. The plan would also move students from Knightdale elementary schools into East Wake Middle’s attendance area in what was meant to be a narrowly focused plan.

“We’re not turning the school district upside down,” Laura Evans, senior director of student assignment, told the school board Tuesday. “We’re not impacting thousands and thousands of students.”

School board members told student assignment staffers in February to see what more can be done to promote diverse student assignments. But on Tuesday, board members talked about how hard it is to keep school enrollment diverse and that more money is needed for new school programs. They also said the county needs more economic development in low-income areas and more affordable housing throughout Wake.

“We have to keep working at other things to frankly encourage development and jobs in this area,” said school board member Jim Martin.

School board member Keith Sutton, whose district includes the area around Rogers Lane Elementary in east Raleigh, said it was “unacceptable” that the school and other nearby schools have reading proficiency rates around 40 percent. He contrasted it with how Hortons Creek and the schools near it have passing rates above 80 percent.

“These students cannot wait on more jobs or more economic development, or what have you in the area,” Sutton said. “These are the kids who are hurting right now.”

Wake has historically tried to promote diverse school enrollments through a mixture of assigning some low-income students to more distant schools and encouraging suburban students to attend magnet schools in Raleigh.

But now Wake assigns fewer students for diversity than before 2009. This past school year, more than half of the students at 50 of Wake’s 171 schools received federally subsidized lunches.

Some groups that had praised Democrats for regaining control of the school board in 2011 are now frustrated by what they feel to be lack of progress in keeping schools diverse.

“As Civil Rights advocates WE were seeking to maintain our diverse school system,” Calla Wright, president of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children, wrote in an Aug. 24 email to school board members. “Secondly, as elected officials, it is embarrassing to know that we have a democratic school board who have made very little change in the student assignment plan.”

School officials said it’s too early to say how many students would be affected by the plan.

In the draft proposal:

▪ Hortons Creek Elementary would get students from Alston Ridge and Mills Park elementary schools;

▪ Rogers Lane Elementary would get students from Barwell, Hodge and Walnut Creek elementary schools;

▪ River Bend Elementary is proposed to become a traditional-calendar school to match River Bend Middle’s calendar;

▪ River Bend Middle would get students from Durant, East Millbrook, East Wake, Rolesville and Wendell middle schools;

▪ Students would move from Wendell Middle to East Wake Middle and vice versa;

▪ Hodge Road Elementary would get students from Knightdale Elementary.

After getting board and public comment, a second draft will be presented in October. Following more feedback, the final draft will be presented in November or December for more comments. The final vote could come in December.

This story was originally published September 6, 2016 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Draft Wake County assignment plan does little on school diversity."