The Wake County school board will have to weigh the pros and cons of going with a small number of large community assignment zones or a large number of small zones.
As noted in today's article, a large number of zones such as those modeled on high school base attendance and high school transportation districts would result in wide racial and economic disparities. A smaller number of geographically large zones would be more diverse but have longer bus rides.
Near the end of the post is a spreadsheet that shows an N&O analysis of the demographics of all four zone maps samples. Plus, it shows where each individual node would be in the four sample maps.
School board member John Tedesco, chairman of the student assignment committee, said he prefers going with a large number of geographically small zones. This would make it easier for students to go to schools in their community but would lead to greater demographic disparities.
Tedesco said he's envisioning each zone with multiple elementary schools and at least one middle school and one high school. He said he'd want to create regional zones for additional middle school and high school choices.
Tedesco said his focus is on creating zones that provide equal education opportunities because he can't draw up demographically equal zones.
"There's no way we can draw up zones that can balance out the inequities in demographics from Zebulon to Apex," Tedesco said. "We can't bus all the way from Zebulon to Apex. I can't make Garner look like Apex."
The zones in the four maps with the highest percentages of minority and low-income students are in Southeast Raleigh and downtown Raleigh. Tedesco noted that most of the schools there are magnets so he said they can continue to accept magnet students to voluntarily desegregate them.
Of the sample maps under review, Tedesco said the one he likes the most is the one based on high school transportation districts. In that scenario, the data shows that the 15 zones would cover a range of between 7 percent and 72 percent white. The F&R ranges would go from 7 percent to 69 percent.
The clustering of rich and poor zones would be more extreme in the high school base zone map favored by some committee members. In that one, six of the 16 zones would have F&R percentages of 20 percent or less with six zones above 40 percent F&R.
In contrast, the area superintendent map with only seven zones would range between 31 and 64 percent white and 16 and 55 percent F&R.
At last month's committee meeting, Michael Alves had talked about the benefits of going with seven zones in Wake for the controlled choice model.
The next committee meeting is on Aug. 31. Tedesco said he'd like to reduce the number of maps under consideration at that meeting. They'll eventually begin adjusting the boundaries of the map they like the most.
Wake has been taking public comments on the zone maps, receiving 581 comments as of Friday.
The zone maps online don't have detailed boundary and node data because Tedesco said he wants more general comments on the four options. He said he didn't want at this point to deal with comments from people pitching for a particular map because of where their node is located.
But since the maps went online, committee members have gotten detailed node information on all four maps. It seems a lot of groups have been crunching away at the numbers for the Aug. 31 meeting.
Click here for the spreadsheet we did based on the school district's raw data. Click on the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet to see where all 1,321 nodes fit in each sample map, along with demographic data on each node.
For those who aren't familiar with nodes, it's how the school district currently assigns students based on address. Tedesco has talked about doing away with the node system in the new assignment model.
But for now, you'll need to know your node number to see where you land on the maps. If you don't know your node, Click here for a link on the district's Website where you can find out your node by inputting your address.
Click here to view the four maps.
Comments
Commenting
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 08:41 — Dove314Just want to encourage everyone to make use of the data provided here and by the BoE and then make your comments to WCPSS. There are 140,000+ kids in the system but TKH mentions that, as of Friday, they had received only 581 comments. Given so many feel so passionately about this issue, here is the chance to give a thoughtful review to what is presented and to share those thoughts with all 9 BoE members and their associated community reps. Just as with the electoral process, it is important to participate.
just wondering
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 19:27 — turnerk1Has anyone worked out the capacity numbers for each of the different zone configurations. In other words if Zone X has 4000 elementary students, are there 4000 elementary seats in that Zone? I'm just wondering if some zones will have more capacity than they need, or much less. It seems to me this is a factor that needs to be considered by the BOE. Capacity is always an issue, obviously, but it would seem to be a problem if they started with zones that already had capacity challenges.
What about magnets?
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 14:54 — bluedaisy(I'm not a magnet mom so please don't come back with magnet bashing!Lets just talk!)
But - how are magnets playing into the overall picture? Seems there needs to be seats available in the magnets, which will, by choice, be taken up from the over capacity zones. Or we would hope that to be the case, for utilization's sake. Are there seats available in those zones with magnets? And, will parents outside those zones still send their students there if the magnets start out high poverty?
I think all scenarios should be considered. The "wild card" here is what the parents will do.
who knows
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 16:11 — turnerk1I think the assumption is if they put all the kids who live near magnet schools back into those schools there will be fewer seats available than there are now for magnet kids. I haven't seen anything that really addresses specific plans for magnet schools though.
That's what I was thinking
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 23:00 — bluedaisyTurner - I'm thinking that too. How do magnets fit in? Decreasing the number of seats for choice in magnets doesn't really fit in to their master plan. Having more magnets would work, but that costs money. There's no money to build more seats in SE Raleigh, unless the board takes money out of projects already approved - by them at the last board meeting. We are beginning to see fiscal implications becoming critical for long range planning.
complex
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 07:55 — turnerk1Assigning kids to schools is a very complex process and so far the BOE has been able to avoid making the hard decisions. But, the time will come and then we'll have to see what they decide. No assignment system can do everything they've promised, so who will they disappoint the most?
JT actually said that he
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 09:03 — zandeJT actually said that he thought they could build more schools in SE Raleigh that would open up more magnet seats. I about fell over when I read this. Where is this money coming from? I really wonder if this board knows what in the word it is doing.
I think they will have a
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 20:36 — user12345I think they will have a challenge ... I saw a few zones that were over capacity and a few that were under capacity on one of the three levels and I thought an efficient system would send the ES from zone 1 to 2 to fill the seats but if everyone has to stay in their zone that won't be possible ... it seems like we are going to end up with some inefficiently with zones that we did not see with schools. That will translate into higher costs I am afraid.
Like Keung said
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 20:56 — g88ky07"In Wake school zone maps, one goal or another suffers"
and this tells us all we need to know about what's coming,
"administrators start planning for massive budget cuts, including teacher layoffs"
Throw a bond in and wheeeeeeew, we'ze in big trouble. Higher costs, that's only a fraction of what's coming.
Barber get Long Leaf Pine award
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 14:48 — CaryiteRev. William Barber awarded the Long Leaf Pine for his work with the Wake County School Board
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7622650
It's a bit of a stretch...
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 18:09 — HenryMiller...to say that Mr Barber worked with the Wake County School board--he seems to have done his best to disrupt the workings of the Wake County School board, while simultaneously doing his best to subvert the will of the people of Wake County.
What Governor Perdue did can be described as little more than political pandering. It's no accident that she gave Mr Barber this award in a place other than Wake County--his actions certainly did nothing to promote the interests of Wake County. Precisely to the contrary, in fact.
Huh?
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 16:34 — Bob_SconceThat's a shame. I know a couple of people who've received this award. Giving it to Barber is sort of like giving the Nobel Science prize to an astrologer.
It is more than a shame, it
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 19:03 — CaryCurmudgeonIt is more than a shame, it is utterly detestable.
Uh..
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 10:21 — Bob_SconceKeung --
(1) In the map of "current high school base zones," all of the zones are contiguous, but they're not contiguous in real life. What's up?
(2) How'd the N&O get the data about F&R percentages per node? -- that's information the district has been reluctant to give up before.
As I think I mentioned in
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 14:17 — KeungHui (author)As I think I mentioned in one of the prior posts, staff moved various nodes to make them contiguous for the purpose of the sample maps.
Staff provided demographic data by node to the committee members at last month's meeting. But the data they provided had a bug and was missing info for a bunch of students. Aside from the fact that the data was missing 19,000 students, at that point staff hadn't shown where individual nodes were in each plan. So at the committee's request, the staff later presented members a spreadsheet showing where the nodes would fall in each sample map. As part of that spreadsheet they also provided corrected demoographic info for each node. We took the raw data and came up with the percentages and put in the same chart where you're located in all four maps.
This is hugely helpful.
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 23:02 — raleighlauraThanks for posting the data. Any way of knowing how the students who are grandfathered into the magnet system, assuming they will still be allocated seats in their magnet school, will impact these figures?
And is anyone considering making the non-high-school magnets year-round? I still think that we could get 25% more kids into those highly-regarded programs even if it is on a less desirable schedule, and we could do it without trailers or new buildings, and with people who are happy to have a long bus ride.
The grandfathering impact is
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 08:58 — KeungHui (author)The grandfathering impact is uncertain right now. It's unknown how many magnet students will stay and how many students will go back to their community schools that are magnets.
year round
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 07:53 — turnerk1Some magnet schools could be made year round relatively easily (combs for instance). But many of the magnet schools either have facilities that are too small (Wiley as an example) or have programs that couldn't be adapted to year round like Ligon. The elective schedule is much more like high school and runs into the same issues as high schools do. A school with electives has to have a lot of elective teachers and classrooms to offer even a small menu of offerings.
Mr. Hui???
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 14:50 — DrActualFactualSo, the data the public has been using to provide public comment on has been incorrect? I wondered why some of the zones got down to -37, -87, 44, 16, -18, while some school zones are at -834, -974, 1354, etc (a wide fluctuation in the number of seats available or missing. Are you saying that the capacity numbers for the HS Base Zone maps are missing 19,000 students? (Missing 19,000 students makes any analysis irrelevant.) Has the public received new capacity numbers since this mistake was found? The public needs the same node info that the committe got in order to make analysis to provide comment (spreadsheet showing where each node will fall in each sample map. TIA. (I sure hope you tell me I have misinterpreted what you have written. Here's a case where I'd like to be wrong.)
The capacity numbers are ok.
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 19:06 — KeungHui (author)The capacity numbers are ok. The problem is that the file originally presented to the members of the student assignment commitee had incorrect data for the racial and ethnic totals. They only had 123,000 of the 142,000 students in the breakdowns by race and etnnicities. The correct file had the right numbers.
I received a copy of the node data
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 11:16 — mbgjwaltersI received an excel file that has for each node, the number of frl, lep, ag and total students for k-5, 6-8, 9-12, as well numbers by race for each node and the number of students attending base, magnet or transfer. My copy is from 12/09, but I don't think you should have any issue asking for and receiving a current copy.
If you want the 12/9 copy, I can post it somewhere so you can copy it.
Truly neighbourhood schools
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 09:17 — HenryMillerGoing to a system of small numbers of large assignment zones does not achieve the objective of truly neighbourhood schools.
Further, the various statistics concerning F&R and white/minority percentages are utterly irrelevant--the purpose of the school system is teaching, not social engineering.
"Further, the various
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 11:03 — user12345"Further, the various statistics concerning F&R and white/minority percentages are utterly irrelevant--the purpose of the school system is teaching, not social engineering."
The concern is that if too many low income kids are concentrated in a school, WCPSS will need to be ready with additional resources to address those kids. Also, I am sure that if they concentrate all the black kids in a few schools and don't fund it correctly they will be open to a lawsuit even if as Ron says it was "unintentional". Poor and minority kids are distributed around under the diversity policy allowing all schools to share the load and WCPSS to invest so little per student. A movement away from that sharing model will require additional resources and costs which are not presently budgeted.
You mean FRL students
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 12:42 — TrailerParkGirl"Poor and minority kids are distributed around under the diversity policy allowing all schools to share the load and WCPSS to invest so little per student." It should say "FRL kids are..."
Students were distributed around based on FRL status, not race since 2000. Yes, in Wake County there is a higher percentage of FRL students within Hispanic and Black minority groups. However, the automatic putting together of "poor" and "minority" needs to stop. There are over 20,000 Hispanic and Black minority students in WCPSS that are not "poor". It especially needs to stop due to the also often automatic substitutions of the terms "low income (aka poor)" and "low achieving."
Do you really not get what is going on when those terms continue to be associated in the manners in which they have been here?
Maybe when more people wake up and realize that when it comes to the term "diversity" Wake County has been Wonderland where down is up and up is down, we'll start to make more significant progress on closing gaps.
"...share the load..." - He ain't heavy, he's my brother