Here is an early look at Bob Wilson's column in Sunday' Durham News. Tell us what you think below (with your name, so we may publish your comments in the paper) or at editor@nando.com

By Bob Wilson

The prospect of a charter high school in Research Triangle Park  has the Durham School Board in a lather, and that's good. The board and Superintendent Eric Becoats are getting an education in market-driven schools.

In other words, Durham Public Schools must learn to compete. The public schools in this city are losing their monopoly. Durham's existing charter schools already account for almost 9 percent of the city's elementary students, the highest market share in the state, according to a Feb. 1 N&O report published in last Sunday’s Durham News.

Predictably, the school board is fighting the RTP charter school tooth and claw, warning that the school will be yet another draw-down on local education funding.

Moreover, the board has thrown a hoary specter into the mix: resegregation.
That's a curious tack, considering that minorities comprise 73 percent of the student population in Durham's public schools. If that's not resegregation, what is?

Durham Public Schools Board of Education members will decide Thursday how to open a new middle school and close two others.

After shelving most of a controversial district-wide magnet plan last week, school board members must address three pressing components at their 6:30 p.m. meeting: 1) how to populate Lucas Middle in the 2012-13 school year, 2) closing year-round Chewning Middle School and 3) closing arts magnet W.G Pearson Middle School.

Superintendent Eric Becoats presented two student assignment plans for Lucas.

Option A has 70 percent of its population coming from its assignment district and 30 percent from a magnet lottery for the International Baccalaureate program. Under the proposal, no more than 10 percent of applicants would be assigned from any elementary school, and Lucas would not open with an eighth grade for the 2012-13 school year.

Option B for Lucas has 100 percent of its enrollment coming from its assignment district.

School board members are unsure if IB is the most appropriate magnet addition in northern Durham or if they should build a strong base middle school customized to the surrounding community’s vision.

School Board Vice Chairwoman Heidi Carter said she's leaning toward option B because it would buy the system more time to determine the most appropriate direction to take the school.  

The second and third components of the plan focused on phasing out Chewning and W.G. Pearson middle schools.  Under the proposal, year-round Chewning would operate on a traditional schedule next school year and serve only eighth grade.  W.G. Pearson Middle would serve only seventh and eighth graders in the 2012-13 school year.

The school board discussed whether students leaving those schools should get priority in the magnet application process, and if enough students would remain at the schools to justify keeping them open.  Some of the unintended consequences could include limited course offerings and resources, and school board members asked whether students would really want to stay under those circumstances.

“These are hard decision that we are going to have to look at,” said school board Chair Minnie Forte-Brown. “But we have to look at what we are doing in terms of making a difference and making it equitable for all children.”

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Durham parents have sent out the message they don't want to emulate some aspects of Wake County's magnet school application process.

As noted in today's article by Virginia Bridges, Durham Superintendent Eric Becoats announced Wednesday that the district was putting on hold a controversial revamp of its magnet program. Durham was looking at creating magnet pathway feeders, that they called "links," that would have reduced the number of open lottery seats.

If some of that sounds familiar, it may be because Caroline Massengill, Wake's former magnet director, was paid $22,500 by Durham to help develop the plan. Massengill and Becoats said that the changes would help improve Durham's chances of winning a federal magnet school grant.

But the changes produced a parental backlash. It looks like the biggest complaints came from parents upset that the changes would reduce the number of open seats at the Durham School of the Arts.

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

Is Durham Public Schools responding to the community’s call to scrap the plan to revamp the district’s magnet and school of choice program?

This afternoon DPS announced that Superintendent Eric Becoats “will make an important announcement” regarding the magnet and student assignment proposal Wednesday morning. Spokesman Jeff Nash said he couldn’t release any details. 

The briefing will take place at 9:30 a.m. in the Rogers-Herr Middle School media center located at 911 W. Cornwallis Road.

DPS released the proposal Nov. 16 with a plan to hold three public meetings before the Board of Education voted on the plan Dec. 15.  The proposal includes shifting base school attendance zones to address overcrowding, as well as a transportation component to streamline bus service, as the system prepared to open Lucas Middle School next year.  DPS officials have said they need to move quickly so the plan will be in place when the magnet application process starts on Jan. 21.

Many have criticized the proposed magnet changes and have asked the Board of Education to slow the process down to ensure information is disseminated throughout the entire community. More than 350 people attended the second of three information meetings about the plan last night. 

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

Durham Public Schools and the U.S. Department of Education have reached an agreement to address a complaint alleging discriminatory practices and hostile school environments for Latino students and their families.

The agreement outlines next steps for the school district, including strengthening its anti-discrimination policy, translating report cards, and improving communication with parents who are not native English speakers.

The agreement makes DPS a better district for all students, Superintendent Eric Becoats said in a written statement. “We will continue to work side-by-side with students and families representing all cultures,” he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal complaint in May contending harassment, inadequate communication and translation services, and other issues affecting at least 6,080 students and their families who speak a language other than English in their homes.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will monitor the district until it determines DPS is complying with federal law prohibiting programs that receive federal assistance from discriminating on the bases of race, color or national origin.

Look for more on this story coming Sunday in The Durham News.

AdvancED is showing more love to the Durham school system than to Wake County right now.

A review team from AdvancED told the Durham school board on Wednesday that they're recommending that the district receive full accreditation. This comes as Wake's high schools are on accreditation warned status.

In a blog post today, Terry Stoops of the conservative John Locke Foundation calls the accreditation of Durham's schools "meaningless." He points to Durham's performance on state exams, which is much lower than Wake's performance, to say that "it is proof that AdvancED accreditation does not mean much about the quality of the schools in a district."

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

Durham Public Schools teachers, parents and students asked the Board of Education Monday night to ask for more local and state money  to prevent the loss of teachers, support staff and additional resources for yet another fiscal year.

The comments, which ranged from raising local taxes to demanding state elected leaders give schools more money, came during a public hearing on a draft budget that proposes cutting 117 positions to help the system deal with a projected nearly $23 million shortfall for the 2011-12 fiscal year. The proposed cuts include 55 teachers and eight assistant principals. The remaining positions, 32 academic coaches, 20 facilitators and two math and reading interventionists, represent salaries that were paid via federal stimulus funds that are no longer available.

Superintendent Eric Becoats’ proposed $418 million budget reflects a reduction of more than $21 million, or 6 percent, compared to this year’s operating budget. The changes include an estimated nearly $16 million, or a 9 percent, decrease in state funding.  

 Other resources identified to close the gap includes asking the Durham Board of County Commissioners for an additional $4 million, $6 million in identified savings, and a one-time $6.2 million federal grant.

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

The Durham Public Schools will try to boost students' SAT scores by sending all 11th graders vocabulary words in text messages.

From March 6 to June 2, participating students and teachers will receive five texts per week.  Each text will highlight a word of the day, provide a definition and use it in two sentences.

The program, dubbed SAT Remix, is being made available through a partnership between Durham Public Schools, the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and Urban Planet Mobile, Superintendent Eric Becoats said Wednesday.

Students will receive a text with a file attached, that will allow them to download the lesson just as they would a ring tone. Students who can't download the message can follow a link and listen to the lesson over phone. 

There are an estimated 2,400 juniors. The school system doesn't know how many have mobile phones but will have a better idea once the students sign up. Students who can’t access the audio text will be able to call in to hear the information, said Fielding Arnold, an Urban Planet Mobile representative.

Tests administered before and after the program will monitor students’ progress, Becoats said.  

The school system plans to provide additional information to parents at a 6:30 p.m. meeting Tuesday at the Staff Development Center, 2107 Hillandale Road.
 

This past Saturday, founders of Union Independent School, a private-becoming-charter school on Dowd Street in Northeast Central Durham, launched a unique college prep program for 54 handpicked black students at Hillside and Southern high schools. This is the second of 3 parts of a story in progress for Sunday's Durham News. Read part one here.

The Saturday academy comes as the Durham Public Schools faces growing pressure to improve the achievement of black males, who make up 27 percent of the school district’s 32,500 students.

In 2004, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning threatened to close Hillside, Northern and Southern high schools, along with others in the state, if the district didn't raise the number of students performing at grade level to at least 60 percent. Hillside is 4.6 percentage points away from that goal. Northern is almost there, at 59.6 percent, and Southern continues to lag at 43 percent.

In addition to having low test scores, black males overall comprise the largest group of students who get suspended and drop out, Superintendent Eric Becoats told last weekend’s panel.  

Many factors contribute: poverty, single-parent households and lower parent education levels, said panelist Loren Harris, founder of Thinking Man Consulting.

But something else is going on, said Donna-Marie Wynn, an investigator with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center in Chapel Hill.

“I think where we struggle is in having all schools be ready to teach African-American boys,” she said.

The teacher at Oake Grove that day, who was white, told Marcus black teachers may be better at teaching black children. Panelists said there can be a disconnect when young black men, often raised by single mothers and feeling pressure to be “the man” of the house, face a white female authority figure in the classroom.

But they said, white or black, teachers do children no good when they accept sub-par work.

“The bar has been lowered as to what success means,” said Harris. “We have to stop the hypocrisy of lower expectations. There’s a lower expectation of African-American performance and African-American male performance in particular.”

Becoats unveiled a strategic plan for the Durham Public Schools Wednesday night that included a focus on raising black male achievement. Last weekend he listened as Harris described “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He listened when Marcus told her story about the elementary school teacher.

He said that has to change.

“At some point we need to say [to teachers], ‘This is not the bus you need to be on, and maybe it’s time to get on another bus.’”
 

From correspondent Virginia Bridges

Superintendent Eric Becoats says the strategic plan he will launch next Wednesday will improve the local education system through “transformation and innovation.”

The 6 p.m. presentation at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center is not open to the general public due to limited space but will be streamed live on the DPS Web site: http://www.dpsnc.net. Meetings to discuss the plan will be held throughout the community later.  

DPS spokesman Jeff Nash said the Research Triangle Park location provides an opportunity to display some of the technology the school system will be using.

The foundation of the plan stems from four goals that the Board of Education adopted in August, which include developing: 1) high academic achievement for all students 2) an effective, district-wide leadership team 3) effective and efficient business systems and 4) a culture and a climate that fosters positive relationships and the well being of staff, students, the community and the Board of Education.

Becoats would not reveal details of the plan but said the community will be able to monitor progress via a software system. “We will do the work. Then we will check what we are doing along the way,” he said. “And then we will take the appropriate action ... as we move forward.”