Wake's school diversity policy

In addition to being an inefficient and ineffective way of spending taxpayer funds, Wake County schools’ diversity policy is actually detrimental to students.

Reviewing the performance statistics for the Wake elementary school we attend clearly shows that overall school performance has suffered as a result of Wake’s policy. Using statistics posted on the system’s Web site for the past three years reveals the following: Enrollment has grown from 1,088 to 1,142 students (an increase of 4.96 percent), while economically disadvantaged enrollment has grown from 77 to 111 (an increase of 44.16 percent). School performance, unfortunately, has diminished: Overall reading test scores have decreased by 4 points from 93.6 to 89.7. And, most alarmingly, overall math test scores have decreased by over 20 points from about 95 to 74.8.
If this is what Wake’s school board calls a successful policy, then we might as well all homeschool our children and save our tax dollars.

Instead of addressing the real issue of taking quality education and good teachers to economically disadvantaged areas to build them up for the better, the board has chosen to dilute the problem through reassignment and subsequently perpetuate the disadvantages while diminishing the quality of education for all students

Cathy Thompson
Raleigh

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I want to express appreciation to the two older gentlemen who spoke at the Jan. 12 school board meeting in the Millbrook High School gymnasium. Neither has children in the Wake County school system, nor did they express concerns over reassignment to one school versus another.

However, they stated a reasonable, conceptual plan for how our school system should work. They urged a return to “neighborhood schools” to allow Raleigh to again operate as a cohesive community. They spoke about the economics of good business — businesses investing in nearby schools.  They spoke about neighborhoods, property values and people purchasing homes with peace of mind in knowing where their children would attend school. They spoke about a community that would support one another because we would return to a value system of working with others in our neighborhood — those with whom we go to school, church, shop and play sports; not a community whose neighbors are arguing in order to protect their own children over another’s to stay at the best school for them.

I’d like to thank them for supporting our community, neighborhoods and schools and for being the type of concerned citizens we’re trying to teach our children to be.

Landra Goodnight Staab
Raleigh

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For years I have read of the reassignment controversy. The emphasis on relocating students who receive free and reduced-price lunch rather than spending resources on improving their schools seems wrong-headed.  It is unfair to the parents of the schools deemed “low performing,” unfair to their children who spend too much time traveling rather than learning and resting, and a slight to the communities within which these schools reside.

Also populating new schools built to accommodate growth by shuttling students from outside the area is questionable. Then there is the cost of all this busing.

The school board does not have an easy task. But the current board makes it so much more difficult by trying to adhere to these restrictive policies.  If residents want this to change, your only option is to find and support school board candidates who are not so resistant to a different approach.   

Louise Guardino
Cary

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Regarding your Jan. 11 Sunday Focus: While the school diversity policy has not been studied in-depth in Wake County, as a high school teacher writing from the trenches, I do believe that it probably produces less glowing results than the county claims but more than some parents think.

In the absence of good, solid numbers, I am convinced we need to keep supporting diversity, with some fine-tuning. For students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, this may be a successful strategy to move away from some community-based anti-learning cultures. While diversity will not always spell success for every child bused to a “better” school, it will open up choices not available in “underperforming schools”: choices for better courses, more involved teachers and a chance to mix with students from communities displaying higher expectations, a chance for new friendships. A chance to realize that, contrary to what might be heard in some homes, education really is the only valid way out of poverty.

But do we need to bus what seems to be every child in the county? No! One solution to consider is to have about 80 percent of students go to the closest school (representing the natural neighborhood diversity) while the remaining 20 percent of seats would be allocated from different, less-advantaged neighborhoods. Schools would still be responsible for reaching out to the children’s families and communities who are being bused, but that challenge already is one we educators presently face and have not yet resolved to anybody’s satisfaction, especially ours.

Roland Menestres
World Languages Department Chair, Wakefield High School
Raleigh

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After 40 years of busing for diversity, we must ask just how long does it take for the leaders to recognize a failure? Busing has been a failure from the first day. With exception to drugs, busing probably has had the most detrimental effect on our communities.  When we take our kids away from their communities, we take with them their families’ ties to the community.  We force them to be a part of a community across town in which they have no ties except the school and we then produce a generation with no real community ties.

As we lose our sense of community, we also see the negative effects in attitudes people have toward education with the dropout rate and the poor scores. There never was a need for busing — only a need for equal opportunities in education in the black community as it existed in the white community. We have failed our children and our communities with these failed policies, and it is past time someone put an end to it.

Every kid should have the opportunity to attend the school in his community or the closest one. This would instill a sense of belonging to all kids in the community and give the parents a chance to build relationships with the community. It seems we have leaders more focused on the system in place than on solving and undoing this tragic mistake we placed on the system years ago.

Ron Driver
Fuquay-Varina

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Im afraid Burgetta Eplin Wheeler completely missed the point in her Jan. 9 opinion piece on the WCPSS diversity/busing policy.

No one denies that high populations of poverty present more challenges.  What most disagree with is the Board of Education’s refusal to evaluate whether this policy is actually helping low-income students. You don’t compare a high income school to a low income school; you compare low-income students who are bused with low-income student who are not bused. If the students who are bused do not show higher achievement, then these students are being used by the school system. They are being inconvenienced and taken out of their culture and communities to make the schools look better overall.  

I’ve taught in both high and low income schools and have many more stories than Wheeler. High-poverty schools need smaller class sizes, more teacher assistants, community outreach social workers, high expectations, structure and more. High-poverty schools often fail because they are treated like all other schools. This model will never work. The parents need support and training, and the students need more than at typical schools.  

It’s time for WCPSS to use resources to actually help children, not just move them around.

Dennis Jacobs
Cary

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In Burgetta Wheeler’s Jan. 9 opinion piece, she described the benefit of moving at-risk students to more low-poverty schools as “it’s the not sitting in a room full of kids facing as many if not more obstacles than you.”

Wheeler really makes the argument for dismantling high-poverty schools and sending all the children to low-poverty schools. If her view that poor parents are not able to become involved in neighborhood schools is correct, those parents would not object.  Most suburban parents would support that as well; our concern is keeping our kids close to home.

Bruce Hussey
Cary
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I am concerned about the effect decisions made by the school board and local governments are having on our children’s education. Requirements for diversity and overcrowding are valid concerns, but the costs are a rising crime rate, increase in dropouts and schools failing in testing requirements. The responsibility for the educational ills of our children rests on everyone, but especially our government. The Declaration of Independence has given us a voice when the government does not live up to its requirements. We have a right and a duty to ensure that the government does not abuse its authority and that its first and foremost concern is the people it serves.

It is by no means irrelevant that the school board and county commissioners have to meet certain criteria for schools, but they have to ensure that our children’s education needs are met first and foremost.

This is the seventh year of “No Child Left Behind,” but many are being left behind. Money is being spent on everything but the children’s education. Buildings and buses are major financial obligations. But who is fighting for the children whose educational needs are not being met?  

Shelia Lucas Jones
Founder and Owner, J.T. Locke Resource Center
Raleigh

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It is extremely short-sighted for the Wake County school board to think that student reassignment is a logical solution.

The only folks who benefit from reassignment are the people on the school board, who get to say to the rest of the country, “We have equality and diversity here.”

Is that the goal?

To be diverse and equal?

I fail to see this as a priority!

There needs to be a movement and pressure, whether from parents or from the North Carolina government, to, at least, study this model. As far as I can see,  it costs more money, it disrupts students lives, it makes it difficult for some families to attend their kids’ school functions due to distance, and it causes much more pollution due to all the buses in transit. Could it be that benefits of reassignment don’t even come close to matching (let alone surpassing) the benefits of keeping students in their “home” school?

So I say, do the studies! Weigh one side against the other. Don’t just tell us, “It’s the best thing for us.”

You haven’t convinced us that you know what’s best for us and our kids!

Ron Fazio
Cary

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Considering the recent Wake schools saga, our children are not learning in schools how to be productive critical thinking citizens, but that the have-nots cannot function without the haves. Wow, class warfare at its greatest! Only the haves can help the have-nots.

No wonder some parents have not attended the meetings. Who wants to hear such demeaning rhetoric? What if a child performs better in a school close to home that is more focused on learning reading, writing, mathematics, etc., instead of class warfare?  

School board Chairwoman Rosa Gill may think that some minority families are not attending because they agree with the policy of busing, but probably not.

Minority parents, like all other parents, believe in their children’s abilities and just want them educated in good schools whether across town, if absolutely necessary, but conveniently in their neighborhoods preferably. Let the parents choose! Are the busing proponents tolerant enough to say that is OK? If not, then bus them.

Surely, the need for all children to focus on learning the basics and to prepare for their future is more important. Diversity can be taught in other ways that is less costly and disruptive than busing.  

Linda Hunt Williams
Holly Springs

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I did some research after learning of my neighborhood’s recent inclusion in the reassignment proposal posted Dec. 20.  

My node (653.0) is in the subdivision of Bedford off Falls of Neuse Road. Students here currently attend Wakefield High School, which is less than 3 miles away. We have been included in the proposal to fill Heritage High instead, which is an additional 6 miles past Wakefield High School, representing an approximate 20-30+ minute commute.  

I contacted Wake County schools to request the amount of money budgeted per student per mile for school transportation. Edward Adams, senior director of Transportation, e-mailed me with a current figure of $2.85 per mile to operate a school bus in Wake County. I was informed that this figure changed. I e-mailed Adams to find out if there were a budget based on a cost to transport one student one mile on the bus. I received no response.  

I then telephoned the Wake County School Transportation Department and asked for the same information.  Adams was not available, and nobody I talked to was able to determine whether this figure existed, and if it did, where the figure could be accessed. I was again quoted the cost of $2.85 per mile to operate the school bus. When I asked what that figure represented, I was told it included fuel, the bus driver’s salary and some maintenance. I was not told what maintenance costs were or were not included. I asked if the amount included administrative costs and was told no.  

Since transporting students from my neighborhood to Heritage will be an additional 6 miles one way, or 12 miles roundtrip, that represents a cost of $34.20 a school day. Multiply this figure time 180 school days, and you have an annual cost of $6,156 just to transport Bedford’s students to a high school farther away.  

The bus arrives in our neighborhood at 6:15 a.m. to transport students to Wakefield High, which is a five-minute drive in a car. Since Wakefield has a start time of 7:25 a.m., students are on the bus for 60 to 80 minutes. Since Heritage High is farther away and the traffic route takes you past six schools and many intersections, it is unknown when the bus will need to arrive in Bedford in the morning to transport students. Of course, board policy states secondary school students should not be on the bus longer than 90 minutes one way. It appears that students from Bedford may exceed this time. I asked Wake County School Transportation what the plan was when students were on the bus longer than 90 minutes. I was told the bus routes could be split.

In our situation, the traffic is the problem. I am told that some neighborhoods require two buses to transport all students. If that was the case, the figure of $6,156 would then double to $12,312.

I have read the articles regarding school reassignment. I participated in the public meeting held Jan. 12 at Millbrook High School. I have read and heard reports of students traveling 10 to 21 miles one way. At $2.85 per mile, that means this is an additional cost of $57-$119.70 per day round trip. Multiply this times 180 school days, and the cost ranges from $10,260.00 to $21,546.00 per school year. How many neighborhoods in Wake County experience this?  How many extra miles are being driven?

If students were assigned to the schools closest to their homes, how many miles would be saved, at a savings of $2.85 per mile? That money could be funneled back to schools identified as needing more staff and/or supportive programs. Schools that may be identified as struggling socioeconomically may receive more money to raise the salaries of teachers choosing to teach at these schools.  Parents who were unable to volunteer in the schools because the school was too far away might have that chance now. Money would be available for school repair and/or renovation.  All it takes is streamlining our system and making it more efficient.

If students were transported to schools close by, the long ride times on the bus would be cut. In fact, parents may decide to let students ride the bus, and this would decrease the volume of private vehicles driving students to school in the morning.  

In our current economic times, national, state, county and city governments are asked to cut their budgets.  Corporations and businesses are cutting budgets. Families are trying to cut their own budgets to pay bills. Shouldn’t Wake County schools study this situation and be fiscally responsible to operate an efficient school transportation system?

Micki McCarl
Raleigh