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Could growth hobble Wake?

Apex bills itself as "the peak of good living," but after parents there and in other Wake towns successfully sued to block one solution to school crowding -- mandatory year-round schools -- the motto morphed into a question for all of Wake County: "Has the good life peaked?"

After years of enjoying bountiful growth and low taxes, Wake County might be coming to a point where paying the price of adding 36,000 residents a year can no longer be postponed.

The school crisis is one sign of that pressure. Next may be clogged roads, crowded parks, permanent water restrictions, rising taxes and even growth moratoriums.

Plan to move students provokes parents

As growth brings more students and new schools, the process of reassigning Wake County's more than 130,000 public school students has become as much an art as a science.

The student shuffle is especially complicated for Wake schools because the district doesn't simply assign students to the nearest school, a common practice in most school districts.

Instead, Wake plans to fill its new schools -- 10 are scheduled to open over the next three years -- while maintaining its traditional commitment to economic diversity. Wake's policy aims to level the percentage of low-income students across the system so that no school will be overloaded with students who have high academic needs.

3 Wake schools cause traffic problems

Three schools and the possible construction of another along one narrow, two-lane road have caused daily traffic nightmares and widespread neighborhood ire in Wake Forest.

"With no traffic, it would take about 10 minutes to get here. It usually takes about 45 instead," said Teresa O'Brien, who takes her daughter to Heritage High School early, about 7:30 a.m., to avoid traffic. "The traffic has just been terrible."

The temporary relocation of Wake Forest-Rolesville High School to the new campus of Heritage High School has caused daily traffic woes on the narrow, two-lane Forestville Road, which serves three schools and is slated to get another one.

Push comes to shove at lagging high schools

To understand North Carolina's broken high schools, look no further than Durham's Hillside and Southern, two that reveal the stories of the others.

Students are concentrated in racially segregated or high-poverty schools. Teacher turnover is high, and principals come and go, leaving many classrooms staffed by inexperienced, underqualified instructors. Parents are seldom involved, and students often misbehave. Promises of improvements have been made but not kept.

Many say a fog of low expectations has encompassed schools filled with poor kids.

Dozens rally in Cary against reassignments

More than 60 parents, children and public officials rallied in front of town hall Saturday morning, the latest gathering to oppose a reassignment plan being considered by the Wake County Board of Education.

Parents think the district's plans to more evenly distribute low-income students in the county will create instability in their lives, because it could force children to go to schools farther from home. They fear it would prevent students from being a part of a cohesive community and that the extra travel would cut into valuable study and family time.

Seven-year-old Litao Tu's parents worry about his bus ride if he is transferred from Oak Grove Elementary School to Adams Elementary.