Wake’s new student assignment plan is coming soon. Here’s what you need to know.

The majority of Wake County’s 160,000 students are still enjoying their summer vacation, but plans are being developed that will change where thousands of children will go to school in 2019.

Wake County’s student assignment staff are working on the first draft of the 2019-20 student enrollment plan that’s scheduled to be released Aug. 21. Here are some issues that could impact families in North Carolina’s largest school system.

Filling new schools

A major portion of the new plan will involve filling four new schools: Green Level High in Cary, Alston Ridge Middle in Cary, Parkside Elementary in Morrisville and Southeast Raleigh Elementary.

Traditional or year-round calendar?

It hasn’t been decided yet whether Alston Ridge Middle and Parkside Elementary will open on a traditional calendar or a multitrack year-round calendar.

Student assignment staff say there’s a lot of demand for the traditional calendar in western Wake, which is what the district has exclusively used in recent years for new schools. But the continued rapid growth in western Wake may lead the district to choose a year-round calendar instead.

In a multitrack year-round school, the students are split into four groups with three in class and one on break at all times. This schedule can increase a school’s capacity by as much as 33 percent.

“We have a demand for traditional,” school board member Kathy Hartenstine said during a June work session discussion of the new assignment plan. “We have a desire for multitrack, and we may have no choice but to go to multitrack to relieve the severe overcrowding in that area.”

The calendar decision at Alston Ridge Middle will likely impact the adjoining Alston Ridge Elementary, which uses a year-round schedule. Regardless of which schedule is chosen, Glenn Carrozza, senior director for student assignment, told the board that he’d probably recommend that both schools use the same calendar.

Juniors or no juniors?

Wake County has historically opened new high schools with only freshmen and sophomores in the first year to avoid making upperclassmen change schools. But that’s not likely going to be the case for Green Level High.

School board members told Carrozza to develop Green Level’s assignment plan based on it having freshmen, sophomores and juniors in 2019. The reason is that other western Wake schools, such as Green Hope and Panther Creek high schools, are so crowded.

“We don’t have any extra schools,” said school board member Roxie Cash. “We need to fill these schools.”

Opening Green Level with juniors means the school will have more students initially, which should increase the number of courses it can offer. But rising juniors who don’t want to change school will be even more unhappy if Green Level doesn’t offer some of the courses they could have taken at their old school.

K-3 class size Impact

Smaller state-mandated K-3 class sizes “will be a big part for” why some Wake students will change schools in 2019, according to Carrozza.

State lawmakers are requiring average K-3 class sizes to drop to 19 students per room in the 2019-20 school year. It’s eventually slated to drop to an average of 17 students per K-3 class in the 2021-22 school year.

Wake student assignment staff have identified 27 elementary schools that they might need to move students out of to get their class sizes down.

“There is a reasonably urgent need for us to do what is necessary to make sure we’re utilizing available seats, and that means more kids will likely wind up moving,” said school board member Bill Fletcher.

Schools with empty seats

While some Wake schools are so overcrowded that students may need to be moved out, some schools have so many empty seats that children may need to be moved in.

Student assignment staff have identified 22 “underutilized” schools that could require actions such as changing how they’re marketed and moving students in to fill their rolls

Several of the underutilized schools are multitrack year-round schools. In the case of some, such as East Cary Middle School and Adams Elementary School in Cary, Superintendent Cathy Moore said it may be time to look at converting them to a traditional calendar..

‘Aggressive’ timeline

School officials say parents shouldn’t see anything deceptive in when the new plan will be introduced and when it could be adopted.

Under the tentative timeline, the first draft of the plan will be released Aug. 21, the week before traditional-calendar schools open. The board could adopt the plan on Nov. 20 during Thanksgiving week.

Since the majority of schools won’t be open Aug. 21, Carrozza said the district needs to aggressively communicate to parents when the plan is coming.

“It’s really important for parents to not feel that we’re trying to start this process when they’re not plugged in, and that’s not what we’re trying to do,” Carrozza said.

Carrozza said the reason for the “aggressive” timeline is to ensure that the board members who’ve been involved in the plan from the beginning are the ones who make the final decision. Any new board members elected in November won’t take office until December.

In the past, Carrozza said some new board members have raised concerns about voting on an assignment plan they were not involved with.

This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 12:20 PM.