Donna Hargens may be named New Hanover superintendent this week

As I recall, Partnership was created by John Surratt to show that WCPSS could compete with new charters such as Magellan. The school was given pot of money and the 3 admin partners could choose how to allocate.  The school was 100% application, no transportation provided - just as charters did.  For a number of years the F&R rate was < 5-7 %.  

Surrounding schools had F&R rates 25-38%.  Our school lost 7-9 strong families to Partnership. Good deal for them- small class size and none of the "issues" that came with having 7-10  poor kids from the projects in their class at the elementary level.  ( BTW, their leaving wasn't a racist thing at all. )

These families probably spent the better part of 12-15 hours a month  minimum volunteering at our school in  a number of capacities, like most of us  (not F&R )did at our school.  

To read that Partnership families had to pledge 4 hours a month volunteering was laughable to us.  Attending a PTA meeting and reading to your child at night counted towards those hours too!

What they created was a small  academy.  Our school counselor  tried to refer  some F&R kids to Partnership but they wouldn't consider them because of their issues.  No question there was some cherry-picking going on. 

"Try to remember way back when YR schools were 100% application - There was great strife (ie. parents complained) over the fact that these YR schools were not diverse enough and that it was unfair.  Responding to that "concern" (ie. giving the whiny parents what they wanted) they were forced to add a base assignment area.  Then a different set of parents complained because they did not want to be put in that base.  So they provided an opt-out transfer.  The BOE has bent over backwards to accomodate these complainers, and that is what started to tear down Policy 6200, et. al. "

I remember history differently from you.

In the 90's, when we bussed for racial diversity, I do not remember strife.  We had magnet schools to attract affluent suburbanites into some Raleigh magnets, and some low income children were being bussed into more distant schools for racial diversity.

Around 2001 or so, WCPSS saw the writing on the wall, and felt that bussing by race would be forbidden, and changed their policy to bussing for socioeconomic diversity.  This, to my knowledge, was the first time that Wake County parents had a clue what the percentage of low income children were in any school.  For instance, at that time, I would have told you that I assumed that Baucom (which my kids attended) and Olive Chapel had pretty much equivalent student bodies, though as it turns out, Olive Chapel had fewer low income kids.  After the numbers were published, though, and we were told that it was a bad, bad thing if you had more than 40% F&R kids in your school, a lot of people became VERY conscious of this number, and very vocal if they saw their kids' schools approaching that number.  WCPSS created a class consciousness that wasn't there before (or at least at anywhere near the magnitude it reached once these numbers were published.)

That was the year when WCPSS first began bussing affluent (non-ED) neighborhoods for diversity.  Among these were some neighborhoods near current Laurel Park ES (which didn't exist then).  These moves were necessitated in WCPSS's mind for two reasons:  First, Dillard Drive and Yates Mill and Swift Creek were all very underenrolled.  This was due to two reasons:  First, WCPSS had chosen to build Dillard Drive and Yates Mill "for growth" into an area that was already adequately served by Swift Creek, when there was far greater demand for seats in western Wake.  Second, WCPSS let the people who lived near these schools magnet out in record numbers.  In some nodes, more than half the students in the base nodes were attending program or year round magnet schools rather than their base node, emptying out the schools.  To save face, WCPSS reassigned our distant nodes with similar demographics to these base nodes into these schools, replacing the locals who got to have the stability and special programs of magnet schools, where our kids were just given a long ride to a distant school outside our feeder patterns.

The complaints about the low F&R in the year round schools came primarily from those schools that had the poverty concentration in their base schools increased by large numbers of kids magneting out --- rim schools such as Dillard/Swift Creek/Yates Mill, Jeffrey's Grove, Stough.  The following year, WCPSS essentially blackballed a lot of nodes from having additional kids assigned to YR or magnets unless they already had an anchor sibling there.  This caused additional uproar.  There was a lawsuit from one family that lived across the street from Oak Grove and had a special needs child that had had doctors, psychologists, and Project Enlightenment staff agree that his needs would be better served at a year round school, yet WCPSS would not let him in (even though there were many open seats.)

It was following this that WCPSS began assigning some low income base nodes into year round magnet schools.  While you remember this as "So they provided an opt-out transfer.  The BOE has bent over backwards to accomodate these complainers," I don't remember it in such benign terms.  I don't remember for sure if there always was an opt out transfer option for the first low income nodes forced into YR base nodes.  If they were, though, my memory was that they were not provided with transportation.  For low income families, unless it is a walkable school, that is tantamount to providing no option at all.  I spoke out about this at the time, as I felt it was unconscionable.  I certainly would not call this "bending over backwards."

It's interesting that you term people who argued against these situations ---- where families were being left with far, far fewer options than your family has had in a magnet school as "complainers" and "whiners."  That shows a lot of compassion to those who have been offered far less from the school system than your family has received.