Can the Wake County school system attract enough applicants to open Richland Creek Elementary School in Wake Forest this year?
As noted in Sunday's North Raleigh News article by Chelsea Kellner, school officials said that Richland Creek needs at least 100 students to have a principal. The school had 46 applicants after round two.
The deadline for the school board to make a decision on Richland Creek for this year will be in June.
Walnut Creek Elementary School is still going to be crowded even with the enrollment cap approved for the rest of the school year.
As noted in today's article, the Wake County school board unanimously adopted a cap to send new students to Creech Road Elementary. The cap will stay in place for the rest of the school year unless Walnut Creek's enrollment, now at 929 students, drops below 862 students.
"Walnut Creek is hemorrhaging and we needed to stop the bleeding," said school board member Keith Sutton, who had requested the cap. "We did that with the cap."
Two different pictures are emerging about the situation taking place at the new Walnut Creek Elementary School.
As noted in today's article, Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata acknowledged that an enrollment cap is needed at Walnut Creek to deal with overcrowding. But Tata, pointing to the additional resources provided to the school, says that Walnut Creek is "on the right track."
In contrast, Cash Michaels calls the overcrowding situation a "crime." He accuses Tata and the Republican board majority "of literally turning their backs on the growing problem there."
UPDATE
Click here for an updated version of the article in The Carolinian that Cash Michaels wrote about the crowding situation at Walnut Creek.
The parents of the Breckenridge community of Morrisville have apparently won their victory with the Wake County school board.
The board preliminarily agreed today to drop the reassignment of the 220 Breckrenrdge students from Cedar Fork Elementary to Green Hope Elementary. Breckrenridge parents had heavily lobbied to stay at Cedar Fork.
The Breckenridge students have been at Cedar Fork since the school opened. When the students were reassigned to Alston Ridge Elementary, Cedar Fork was left as the traditional-calendar application school.
SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST
Newly released figures today show that the Wake County school system would lose hundreds of teachers and potentially the vast majority of its teacher assistants to help make up for possible state budget cuts.
The state Department of Public Instruction was asked by Gov. Bev Perdue to draw up how it would cut funding by 5 and 10 percent to help close a $3.5 billion revenue shortfall next year. A 5 percent to Wake, or $51.6 million, would cost the state's largest school system 429 classroom teachers and 73 instructional support positions.
The impact would be especially hard on teacher assistants, with Wake losing $20 million, or 37 percent of the state funding it now receives. In that scenario, the state would only fund teacher assistants for kindergarten, first grade and half of the second-grade classes.
The State Department of Public Instruction is painting a grim picture of potential budget cuts affecting schools both across North Carolina and in Wake County.
As noted in today's article by Lynn Bonner, the potential budget cuts laid out by DPI would result in the loss statewide of 5,300 teachers, elimination of thousands of teacher assistant positions and increases in class sizes. With Wake getting between 9-10 percent of the state's education funding, it wouldn't be pretty locally.
To help close a projected $3.5 billion revenue shortfall next year, Gov. Bev Perdue asked most state agencies to draw up plans for 5, 10 and 15 percent cuts. She only asked DPI to draw up 5 and 10 percent cuts for education funding but it's still pretty bleak.
Wake had 139,362 students as of the 10th day of classes for traditional-calendar schools on Tuesday.
Over the next couple of days, school officials will use the enrollment figures to determine how many teachers will be moved to different schools to help reduce class sizes. Schools get funding for teachers based on the number of students they have enrolled.
School officials say they’ve been fairly close to their enrollment projections. Schools officials had projected in February that enrollment would reach 140,012 students by the 20th day of classes. That estimate was lowered to 139,726 students last month.
A not so cheerful year for traditional-calendar schools will start tomorrow.
As noted in today's article, students are returning to schools where class sizes will be up and some elective courses have been dropped. Some teachers are still out of a job and supply budgets have been sliced.
"Our parents understand where we are with this economy," said Chip Mack, the new principal of Davis Drive Elementary School.
Wake school leaders are bashing the state for forcing them and other school districts to make unpopular budget cuts such as raising class sizes and reducing teacher assistant positions.
No new positions were eliminated today as they were already anticipated in the budget. But today's board vote makes the cuts official.
At issue is $225 million in discretionary K-12 state education cuts. Wake's share of those discretionary cuts is $21.7 million.
Click here for the online story.
