Hood "confused" by NAACP actions against Wake schools

but, if you want not to be here as this system moves in a new real world direction, no one is stopping you, or others, from leaving yourselves!

As for the I grew up in Atlanta and whites ran at every turn to escape those not like them, what bull. I was born, raised and lived in ATL for decades and I don't EVER recall seeing anyone running from anyone else. At least not for the reasons you say.

And as for building 1 school in 30 years, not even close. Add some more digits to your 1.

"When my kids were "shuffled,"  and the "neighborhood" school's fortunes waxed and waned as a result of the shifts, it was entirely due to the # of people moving here from New York and New Jersey;"

I'll take you at your word on that, and am glad that in the end, the experience worked out OK for your family.

But please realize that what you saw happening at one school does not necessarily define what happened in all other schools.  My node was among one of the first NED nodes that were reassigned to a distant school for socioeconomic diversity in the first year that WCPSS officially changed its policy from one based on racial diversity to one based on socioeconomic diversity.

My (former) neighborhood, on the Cary/Apex border was reassigned to Dillard Drive Elementary.  While growth in west Cary and Apex was growing through the roof at the end of the 90's, WCPSS chose to build both Dillard Drive ES and Yates Mill ES within a mile or so of existing Swift Creek ES because that location was on the "busable rim" instead of where the growth was happening.

What WCPSS didn't plan on was that the families who lived near those schools on the rim feared the instability of reassignments, and in order to gain stability, magneted out in record numbers.  When we researched this at the time of our reassignment (around 2001), we found that more than 50% of the students in the base nodes living near Swift Creek ES had magneted out.  Suddenly, the affluent suburban base that WCPSS had counted on being in these busable rim schools had deserted the schools, and Swift Creek and Dillard were left as seriously underenrolled schools with fairly high poverty concentrations.  In other words, the nodes of the low income kids being bused in from SE Raleigh in order to go to a more affluent school were being bused into a school that wasn't really affluent anymore.  As a result, WCPSS cast its net out in our direction, and our moderately affluent Apex node was reassigned to be bussed in to take the place of the neighborhood base families that had magneted out.

Having had very bad experiences due to long bus rides when I was a kid in a rural county, I had opted not to apply to magnet schools for my kids because all the magnet schools (save one) were very distant from our home.  I was very upset that my kids were then reassigned from a nearby school to a distant school, so that they would be forced into a long bus ride without even the benefit of any special programs at the distant school.  Growth management staff told us that we were being bused in to improve the socioeconomic balance of the school.  They literally used the phrase "stinky schools" when they told us that our kids were needed there because when the percentage of low income kids in a school approached or exceeded 40%, parents had the perception that it was a "stinky school."

I'm glad that your kids weathered their reassignments well.  I have 2 sons, one of who was a rising 1st grader and and one a rising 4th grader at the time of the reassignment.  My older child was outgoing, and one who will bloom wherever he's planted.  My younger son was, at that time, painfully shy and had difficulty adjusting to new people and new situations.  His preshool teacher, his kindergarten teacher, and his physician wrote letters to the BOE stating that reassigning him to a new environment would be harmful to his development that were ignored when we applied for a transfer.

One size does not fit all.  As a parent, I resented how WCPSS touted itself as a school system that offered choices when our family was offered no choices whatsoever.  (Growth management denied the magnet applications of all families except for one in our group of 4 reassigned nodes that year.)  This is the inherent source of discord in the system.  A system where families living in the core of the county have nearby magnets as their base assignments or nearby options, while those who live at the outer edges are not only too far from the magnets to make them a viable option but also see their remaining choices reduced by mandatory year round and having their neighborhood schools  diminished by being forbidden to have "electives or anything resembling an elective" is unjust.  Anyone who cared to consider how systems work could clearly see that such an unbalanced system of offerings is  certain to breed resentment and unrest.

Thanks for the words of common sense and perspective refusingtobeunkind. That is exactly what I expected was happening in the rim schools. Lots and lots of transplants made the shifting necessary. Ironically, those neighborhoods were probably so attractive to transplants b/c of the WCPSS policies in place at the time. (Disclosure.. I am myself have been happily transplanted in this wonderful area since 1987. I did not attempt to radically change everything to "how we did it where I am from.")
 

And the reassignments were driven by the massive growth and chronic underfunding.

------------------------------------------------------

Not at the rim schools.