The Cary era of the Wake County school board officially starts this afternoon with the first meeting at the Crossroads I Building.
The new board room and conference at 5625 Dillard Drive both hold more seats than the former digs at Wake Forest Road. But there are also sight-line issues so monitors have been placed around the board room for people who will have a hard time seeing the board table.
The work session agenda appears to be much meatier than the regular meeting agenda with topics such as student assignment, the Hilburn Elementary conversion, the new middle school math placement policy and school bus travel times.
The length of the discussions on the student assignment update and the Hilburn K-8 conversion will impact how much time the board has for the other work session topics.
One thing to watch is how much support and resistance there is for the new middle school math placement policy. Some board members don't like how the policy would only allow teachers to override EVAAS to place a student in a higher math class but not to send a student into a lower level one.
School board vice chairman John Tedesco said, based on the work session discussion, he'd like to get the policy added today to the regular session agenda.
Transportation staff will present information on the lengths and distances of school bus routes. Depending on what the information shows, Tedesco said he might want staff to revise board R&P to limit how long a student could travel on a bus, even the magnet students who voluntarily choose the longer rides.
The R&P used by staff says that the one-way ride time should be less than 45 minutes for most students. But it says it can be up to 75 minutes one-way for base elementary students, up to 90 minutes for base secondary students and up to two hours for magnet and calendar-option students.
Tedesco said no student should have to ride two hours each way and four hours round trip each day, even if it's a magnet student going voluntarily.
Tedesco said they might want to lower the maximum one-way times. For magnet students, he said that might mean using more express busing to make the routes more efficient.
Heading into the regular agenda, one item deals directly with the efforts to consolidate Central Services. Staff has said Wake could save $29 million over 20 years from the move to Crossroads, assuming the various administrative buildings in Raleigh are sold off.
The agenda includes a vote on selling part of the land housing the Central Services building on 2302 Noble Road in Raleigh for $1.9 million.
But Wake will need to sell the Wake Forest Road building at a good price to recoup the savings.
UPDATE
The school board gave a thumbs up to staff continuing work on the Hilburn conversion. In the meantime, Tata will develop a plan for getting more community input.
The sheet presented today indicated they're looking at moving Hilburn to single-track year-round. But Tata said the board shouldn't focus on that because 99 percent of the discussion has bee on it staying on the traditional calendar.
The board voted to reject the offer to sell part of the Noble Road property because it was 15 percent under the appraised value of the parcel. Credit goes to Carolyn Morrison for questioning the price and urging them to wait until they can get a better deal.
I'll cover the ride time discussion in a separate post.
Comments
90 min is too long of a commute/bus ride...
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 14:24 — sam123456We live 15 min from high school and it has taken my child 60 min+ to get home. To me that is ridiculuous! How many of the school administrators have 60+ min commutes to work?
Question
Wed, 09/07/2011 - 12:12 — Dove314Does your child attend their base HS? And it is the base HS bus route which is taking 60+ minutes for what would typically only be a 15 minute journey? If so, it suggests that maybe the bus routes themselves need adjustment regardless of base, special choice, or magnet school due to unrealistic routes. Commute times do shorten as both drivers and students settle in but this seems more wide spread than the usual start of school year mayhem. It would be important to understand what, if anything, was changed resulting in the longer times, if so.
Take your kid to school yourself
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 15:10 — FSandYOUand I bet you can get him/her there in no time!
but may tax dollars pay for bus service
Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:52 — sam123456why should I have to take my kids to school??? I pay tax dollars and should recieve bus service that gets my kid to school in a reasonable time just like everyone else gets. I work and do not have a schedule that allows me to drive my kid to school.
bus ride times
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 08:47 — EBDarcyHow are they calculating ride times? Based on the actual time the bus is traveling or in relationship to school start time? Or the time the doors open? Is distance covered a factor? Number of students and stops? Its difficult to compare bus times without knowing more info.
A bus route that transports 10 children in 45 minutes might be said to be inefficient. Yet another bus route might transport 50 children in that same amount of time. Comparing travel times doesn't give us the complete picture.
For example: One of the buses to my neighborhood is for a school 3 miles away. Last year it took 15 - 20 minutes for the bus to bring students home and it was the first bus to leave the school and the first stop. This year they added 2 additional stops before my neighborhood and now the afternoon travel time is 35 - 40 minutes. So the addition of just 2 stops doubled the ride time.
In the morning the same group of students board the bus 70 minutes before school starts and 40 minutes before the doors open. It arrives at the school just before the doors open. Some might say that's a 70 minute bus trip. Others might say it's 40.
I am all for shorter bus rides and conserving fuel. But I am also concerned that this data is too easily manipulated to make a point.
I can solve your entire problem
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 09:01 — FSandYOUI continue to believe that 90% of the busses currently on the road need to be parked. For good. If parents can't get their kids to school then whose problem is that? As our budget crisis looms for next year, it's either cut teachers, and a lot of them, or cut fueling up those big, yellow, unsafe boxes that transport children all over creation and most of the time half empty. Millions upon millions could be put back into the classroom if we just made those who are responsible be just that, responsible.
Shocked
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 07:30 — Dove314As Foghorn Leghorn used to say "I'm shawcked, I say, just shawcked." to see this "Transportation staff will present information on the lengths and distances of school bus routes. Depending on what the information shows, Tedesco said he might want staff to revise board R&P to limit how long a student could travel on a bus, even the magnet students who voluntarily choose the longer rides."
If there had been an option to bet, I would have had money on this after Bob Sconce raised the item earlier this weekend in a separate post. It's almost as if there is some back door connection where some know what the BoE is going to put forth in their agenda in advance. For those who have an interest and want to see some back on forth on this topic, see the following thread:
blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/wake-gop-accuses-democrats-of-overlooking-school-boards-accomplishments
All that aside, express busing would seem a viable alternative.
Hah...
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 08:06 — Bob_SconceThe fact that the issue was apparant to me after just reading a letter to the editor means that it should be super-apparant to the school board members. They're the ones who get all the emails and phone calls.
But, just for the record, I didn't talk with John (or anybody else on the school board) about it. Our secret weekly meetings usually revolve around implementing whatever fatwahs Art Pope, Bob Luddy and Ed Koch have put out in the previous week. Today, we're going to see about adding John Kennedy's affair with Marilyn Monroe to the district's US History curriculum.
Where can I find some information...
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 07:12 — bpuli9999on the projected savings by the move to the new offices in Cary? I remember seeing this in the forums a while ago but can't find it anymore.
When you find it
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 14:23 — valsparWhen you find it, be sure to look for the Ron/John math.