NAACP engaging in protest at Wake school board meeting

With all due respect, you don't know as much about me as you think.

I know that you are relatively young and that your only experience with WCPSS is for the two years that your oldest has been in school. And I have heard you say that the basis for many of your thoughts are your own personal experience. I am simply trying to point out that you have not had to deal with many of the issues that thousands of parents have had to confront.

I was once a director in an organization (in a previous life) that provided me with the opportunity to speak with parent groups and PTAs all over the county, to discuss assignment issues with former superintendents, WEP leaders, 6 local mayors, and local and national media. I am bringing much more than my own personal experience to the discussion.

I have dealt with a reassignment.  My daughter wasn't traumatized.

Good for you. Though I believe that you were reassigned to a NEW school that was CLOSER to you neighborhood, and your daughter continued to go to school with her neighborhood friends. Frankly, if that's your only experience with reassignment, consider yourself blessed.

Did you explain the positive aspects of the reassignment or did you yell "why us?" and complain?

Perhaps you can help me here. What do you find positive about:

1. becoming a spot node.
2. being reassigned to an ES such that there are 23 ES closer to your home.
3. having 85% of your node refuse to accept the reassignment, and enroll in magnet, charter, private, and home school, and fracturing the neighborhood in the process.
4. having a drastic reduction in after school activity because many of your new classmates live on the other side of the county.
5. not being able to volunteer nearly as much as you did at the previous school.
6. being told by your reassigned schools that they did not have the resources to deal with your AG child, and that her only option would be to skip a grade.
7. being in an ES where less than a dozen kids will go to the same MS as your child.

I don't know about siblings on different calendars and how it could happen.

One in high school on traditional calendar, one in middle school on year round calendar. Other than weekends, they have about 20 days of in common the entire year.

Magnet envy drove a lot of the discontent that led to the new board's election.  I think that's obvious.  The only problem with that is that there are going to be a lot of people who don't get into magnet schools as long as there are magnet schools.

I disagree. Many of the disenfranchised have been consistently denied acceptance into the magnet program.  Those that elected the new board don't want to go to magnet schools. They want community schools and stability. The only reason many of us applied to a magnet school to begin with, is because of the guarantee of stability.

I haven't seen evidence of a "total lack of regard for the family unit" by the old board.  That is just a hyperbolic claim made to get a rise out of people, just like the NAACP's constant racism claims.

I've personally spoken with thousands of parents who feel like the previous boards have had a total lack of regard for families. How many more do I have to speak to before you'll drop the hyperbole claim?

Most multiple assignments have been due to growth.  There's not much that can be done about that.

Ok, let's take this opportunity to discuss growth and reassignment. Growth increases enrollment at existing schools. In most districts around the country, when enrollment becomes unsustainable in two (or more) schools, the district builds a new school, centrally located to the crowded schools, and reassigns neighborhoods to the new school. Here's a simple example: Schools A and B have enrollments that are at 120% of capacity. A new school C is built, centrally located near schools A and B. 40% of the kids in School A and 40% of the kids in School B are reassigned to School C. The neighborhoods reassigned to School C are contiguous neighborhoods located close to School C. In this example, the number of kids reassigned is kept to an absolute minimum. Those that are reassigned continue to go to school with the kids in their neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods. AND -- they get to go to a new school. If this was the way that growth and reassignment were handled in Wake County, I doubt that you would see any opposition to reassignment here. Who amongst us would complain about being reassigned to a brand new school, and one that is closer to our home?

So let's compare and contrast that with the way growth and reassignment are handled in Wake. When it's time to build a new school, very little attention is given to the appropriate location of the new school (e.g. 3 elementary schools within 1.8 miles of each other on the rim). They find the cheapest piece of land (in some cases, agreeing to spend 3 times as much as it is worth), and build a school. Then they begin to populate the school, paying particular attention to "the numbers." This often leads to the domino effect: Not only are kids moved from Schools A and B into School C, but now they have to move kids from Schools D and E into Schools A and B to balance SES. Then schools D and E are unbalanced, and more families are affected. Then when affected families begin mass exodus of their base school and enroll in magnet, charter, private, and home schools, even more reassignments are necessary to put things back in balance. When all is said and done, the opening of School C has a tsunami effect, swallowing thousands of families in its destructive path. And WCPSS gets to say that all those reassignments were all due to growth, and folks like you drink the kool-aid.

If you can't show me where the money will come from, then everyone should stop singing the praises of an assignment model that we can't afford, and face the realities that we're going to have to deal with.

As far as I know, no one has performed a cost analysis that has shown that the new assignment model will be more expensive. Your claim is nothing more than your opinion. I have posted on previous blogs that WCPSS has spent millions of dollars each year on involuntary busing (WCPSS' term for busing students for diversity reasons). Involuntary busing will go away with the new assignment model, freeing up millions of dollars each year. That money could be used on the new assignment model IF, in fact, it turns out to be more expensive.