Rallying against reassignment proposal

"They will never listen to parents unless the courts make them."

That's a joke!  Obviously THAT does not work either.  As shown since Manning's ruling!

"then educate yourselves and get involved in the next elections"

I'm not sure saying we're uneducated on the situation in correct, but you FIRST have to have candidates willing to endure and run.  I don't see them lining up!

If you think this is all silly, as you put it, keep reminding them they can put off their bond as LONG as they want, but we'll be here when they do man up to bring it.

And when EVER that is we WILL DEFEAT IT!

Last year a group of passionate parents formed a non-profit organization called keeplocalschools.org exactly for this reason. We saw that all the exhausting talking was getting no results. In fact, we think the BoE is using the speak outs and online comments as a tool to let off parent steam, without having to respond. The ONLY way the BoE has paid one whit of attention to parents has been through the WakeCARES lawsuit. We have been informed professionally that we have another different, very good case. A non-profit takes the individual risk out of a suit. We are now raising money toward this purpose. If you'd like to know more, you can go to keeplocalschools.org. Of course direct donations are GREATLY encouraged, but you can also buy the book "Wake County's Big Secret" to help support our efforts. If you're interested in turning your passion into concrete action, please join us!

Sorry this is happening to you but if it makes you feel any better East Cary is an AWESOM school.   Enrolment is so low it might as well be a private school.   The kids are well behaved the teachers are superb, special ed staff have a great rep and I would give any body part to get my son in.  There are some knuckle heads about 2 or 3 per grade level which is nothing and the staff handles it well.  ECM does not offer as many advance classes because of the tracks spreading kids out but the classes they have are well taught , well behaved and I am sure their test scores will be great.

I have been there before.  My oldest son was reassigned in elementary school from an existing year-round to a new year-round, and despite our protests, the board didn't change its mind.  And we went through the Cary to PC reassignment, too, and although I didn't protest publicly, I did send make my feelings known to some staff and BOE members. However, I don't feel past experiences is reason enough to stop trying. What's the alternative?  Just accept it?  

And by the way, the reason my post was so long - or as you termed it 'marathon' was that after I made the post, I also posted a letter that was sent to the BOE members, and I made it clear in the post what was to follow (too bad the formatting got messed up from the original letter on another post).  You are correct that the BOE probably won't be swayed by 119 upset parents, but perhaps they might be swayed by logic and reason, which is why I outlined the letter in such detail.  Nobody has to read the letter if they don't want to, but it's there if someone  - such as a BOE member - would like some specifics.  

I can understand your frustration and anger, which is obvious in your post, but please don't put down other groups who want to attempt to do what you tried before. 

Besides, I don't think of the BOE members as enemies; I think the WCPSS ressignment philosophy is flawed and that the whole philosophy of balancing and rebalancing schools economically isn't feasible or even beneficial in many ways. Yes, the system needs an overhaul, and the BOE is a part of it, but the BOE  is not the whole problem and should not be treated as such. Some philosophy changes need to be made from the very top or our communities will continue to be torn apart and our children and teens will never feel a sense of belonging at or ownership of their schools.

Ain't it the truth? We all need to collectively fight together for the best of the county. Sadly, people tend to fight for themselves. They either get out of the reassignment by some miracle and disappear or they bang their head on the wall longer enough to understand they get nowhere.  Again, the only 2 ways we will ever overcome is:

1. At-large elections

2. A new Board of Education.

Until then, our hands are tied.

Then why is Panther Creek overenrolled by 500 students this year and we have God only knows how many mobile units waiting on site until a traffic study is completed? They certainly coming from somewhere, which is why the WCPSS decided to reassign students to Cary and Athens. I'm sure there is still more development to come, though.

Green Hope High is not an option here.  Yes, some students in the Morrisville Elementary area who go to Green Hope High School have been reassigned to Cary High, but that is not our group.  Our group of nodes has been reassigned from Panther Creek to Athens Drive after being reassigned from Cary to Panther Creek in 2006, and a few years before that from Green Hope to Cary, and a few years before that from Cary to Green Hope.  Whew! Can you see why we are frustrated?? Particularly when we had no business being at Panther Creek anyway in the 2006 assignment because it is far away from our nodes (over 8 miles) and we (and our 16 year old drivers) have to go to school and practices through heavy RTP traffic.

Anybody could predict the Panther Creek area would explode, population-wise, by looking at the construction plans. Our students in our nodes were used to start the school, and now that we've done our duty, they are ditching  us off somewhere else. We were expecting Cary and prepared for Cary again, but we get Athens Drive instead. When we were reassigned to Panther Creek, some other nodes behind our nodes along Cary Parkway were reassigned too, and now that all those kids have bonded, they are being split, as the nodes along Cary Parkway are reassigned from PC to Cary, but our nodes (which are closer to Cary) are assigned to Athens Drive. 

Ideally, all students in this Panther Creek (to Athens Drive & Cary) reassignment should be allowed to stay at Panther Creek if they want since they were primarily used to fill up a school until the communities around it grew (grandfathered in).  And ideally, those who accept the reassignment should be reassigned to Cary only, not Athens. 

See below for a letter I wrote outlining our stand on this reassignment. There are responses to an earlier posting of this letter on this blog under the post labeled "High Online Reassignment Interest. 

Dear Wake County School
Board members:

Enough already!  My node 367.1 and other nodes near it on
North Harrison Avenue (nodes  367.3,
367.4, 367.6, 367.7) have been bounced around from one high school to another
for the past six years, and it has got to stop! 
Wake Schools’ Chuck Delaney was quoted on WRAL as saying, "If you're going to be a growing
county, it's [reassignment] inevitable." Mr. Delaney, our node realized that and therefore, we
didn’t protest our reassignment three years ago to Panther Creek, even though we
were not happy about it and it made no sense geographically. “Inevitable”, of
course, means ‘incapable of being avoided or eluded.” Yet, reassignment is much
more than ‘inevitable’ for our nodes since we didn’t escape it in 2006 and are
not escaping it now; sadly, it is almost ‘expected’ and not merely ‘inevitable’
due to the unfair way we have been treated.

Our node was in the Cary
High district for a long time, then switched to Green Hope for a few years, then
back to Cary,
then to Panther Creek, and now to Athens Drive!  Our node is like a ping-pong ball being
bounced around all over the place.  My
oldest son went to 9^th grade at Cary High, then was reassigned to
Panther Creek where he is now a senior; he could not be grandfathered in since
he was being transferred to an existing school. Last year, he almost applied for
a transfer back to Cary for several reasons, but he decided to
stick it out at Panther Creek. Now with the proposed plan, my middle son, a
freshman at Panther Creek, will be reassigned to Athens Drive. We
anticipated that our node might be reassigned back to Cary for the 2009-2010
school year since Panther Creek is so overcrowded.  We knew that in the big picture of things it
made logical sense for our node to go back to Cary, so many were prepared for that
switch.

But Athens Drive???  I have nothing against Athens, and I myself am a graduate of the school in 1980
(after being reassigned from Cary when Athens was first opened I
might add).  However, this reassignment
is not fair to our node and other nodes in the area. If we are to be reassigned,
we ask that our students are FAIRLY reassigned.
Why?

Top
10 Reasons for Sending North Harrison Nodes to Cary Instead of Athens
Drive

1. The proposed reassignment
   to Athens
   Drive is not fair to the students in our node. Wake
   County Schools seem to be so concerned in other reassignments with keeping
   ‘peers together from middle to high school’; yet these students in our node were
   sent three years ago to Panther Creek where not many of their peers were
   assigned (a lot of their peers were assigned to Cary) and now will be uprooted
   again and sent to Athens Drive where they don’t know other students and the
   campus and area is entirely new to them. Same deal as three years ago when my
   oldest son was sent to Panther Creek from Cary. I’ve received many emails from fellow
   parents whose children are extremely upset specifically because the reassignment
   is to Athens
   Drive instead of Cary.

2. It’s not fair to parents.
   This reassignment means that my two oldest sons (one a senior, one a freshman)
   will have attended three high schools – Cary, Panther Cree, and Athens Drive. I
   didn’t fight the reassignment to Panther Creek, even though we were not pleased
   with it because I knew that Panther Creek needed to be filled, and we drew the
   short stick somehow and had to go. Now we’re drawing the short stick AGAIN, and
   I have to protest this.  I can’t even
   remember what team to root for when my sons play ball.  “Go Imps! 
   I mean Catamounts!  I mean
   Jaguars!”

3. This proposed plan has
   unfair boundary lines for reassignment. The neighborhood directly behind ours
   that includes friends of my freshman son – his ‘peers’ if you will – is
   scheduled to go to Cary from Panther Creek. We have easier access
   to Harrison
   Avenue and the straight shot into downtown Cary than that
   neighborhood does (they have to get on Cary Parkway first), but they are going to
   Cary and us to Athens
   Drive? What about the big issue of keeping peers
   together? Does it not apply to us, too?

4. Feeder patterns should not
   be a higher priority than fairness to our node. If this change is because of
   feeder patterns, then it will have a detrimental impact on our node. Let me ask
   where were these feeder pattern concerns when my oldest son who went to Adams,
   Lufkin, and Cary, was then shipped to Panther Creek where he didn’t know many
   people at all? Nobody seemed to care about it then. Sure it’d be nice to have an
   elementary/middle school/high school feeder pattern for all students; but it
   should not be provided to some students at the expense of other students who
   have already more than paid their dues in this system.  Forget consistency through all three levels
   of school – I’d simply like my sons to go with their peers to high school together. Besides, with
   people moving in and out and more neighborhoods being developed, this feeder
   pattern idea is never going to be feasible. In addition, this whole concept is
   not fair to students at year-round schools like my sons were; most of the
   students they went to at Lufkin went on to Apex. Having a base area to
   go to from middle school to high school with doesn’t matter to year-round
   students; we’d rather attend high schools that make sense geographically.
   

5. We’re tired of having our
   node being abused by the school system. This little strip of nodes on the side
   of North Harrison has been used as guinea pigs
   for too long.  First, my oldest son was
   reassigned from Morrisville Elementary when Adams Elementary reopened as a
   year-round school, and I had to tear him away from his friends when he started
   third grade.  The neighborhood behind us
   (the same one that is being reassigned from PC to Cary instead of our node) stayed at Morrisville, while we
   had to go to Adams. We were used to start the
   new year-round program at Adams. It’s like we
   are the nodes the Wake County Public School System experiments with, while they
   don’t care about the effects of these illogical changes. Then we were guinea
   pigs again when we were reassigned from Cary to Panther Creek to fill up the new
   school; we were so far from Panther Creek, and the area near PC was growing so
   incredibly rapidly that we knew we wouldn’t be there for long.  We were just being used to help start a new
   school, and then when our job was done, we’d be moved again. However, we always
   thought it would be Cary High we’d be reassigned to, which would have made
   sense. Athens
   Drive does not make
   sense.

6. This plan hurts parental
   and financial support for schools. I’d put a lot of time and energy in working
   for the PTA at Morrisville (and for the Wake County PTA) during those first
   three years of my oldest son’s education; then he and my middle son were
   reassigned to Adams. I then I had to start all over with a brand new school and
   help organize the PTA there, which was a big job. Our new PTA worked hard to
   raise money for things I’d just worked hard to buy for Morrisville.  Parents work so hard to contribute to their
   children’s school, and then boom – they are moved around like musical chairs.
   This seriously harms the motivation for parents and others to give to a certain
   school when their children will quite possibly be at another one the next year.
   

7. Many reassigned students
   are already familiar with Cary High. Many students -- like my middle son -- had
   older siblings who were at Cary when our node was assigned there, and they
   formed somewhat of an allegiance and familiarity with Cary High while their
   older siblings were there.  My middle son
   attended some Cary High games then and was disappointed – just as my older son
   was -- when our node was switched to Panther Creek. When PC became overcrowded
   and people said we’d probably be reassigned again, I told my son it would
   probably be back to Cary. 
   He was okay with this because, as I said, he’d had some experience with
   it when his older brother went there and a lot of his peers already went there.
   He has none of this at Athens
   Drive.

8. This proposal doesn’t make
   sense geographically. Our node is located on North Harrison Avenue, which is 4 miles
   from Cary High and basically a straight shot to the school. At the end of this
   year, I will have spent three years driving through RTP traffic to Panther Creek
   to pick up sons from practices and other events or worrying about my 16-year-old
   son navigating these traffic dangers himself; the drive to Athens Drive is
   better than the one to Panther Creek, but the drive to Cary is the safest and
   shortest of all. I think we’ve paid our dues in gas bills over the three years
   we’ve spent at Panther Creek.

9. This proposal of our area
   to Athens
   Drive severely hurts the fabric of our communities.
   The school system is simply tearing apart any semblance of neighborhood left. I
   became very aware of this when my oldest son went to Panther Creek with students
   who lived in Apex and off Highway 55, many of whom knew each other. Our node was
   taken out of our community and shoved into another one. The same thing will
   happen with this Athens
   Drive
   reassignment.

10. In terms of extracurricular
    activities, transitions to Cary will be smoother than transitioning to
    Athens
    Drive. My freshman son recently made the JV
    basketball team at Panther Creek and will now of course have to try out next at
    his new high school. He was okay with having to switch to Cary because he knows some of the Cary athletes from rec league and AAU play, while he knows
    nobody at Athens. I know of some baseball players on the
    Panther Creek JV team who are now reassigned to Athens but have played Cary American Legion ball with Cary
    High players, not Athens players.  Why? 
    Because we live in Cary, not the Athens area. These
    students who have worked hard to make teams or other school groups but are now
    reassigned, deserve to go where they will feel more comfortable – that school is
    Cary High.

 In late September, I
attended a meeting that included Chuck Delaney’s presentation about the possible
reassignment plan. In it, he talked about the possibility of my node as well as
the Brier Creek area of being reassigned to Cary;
I questioned him about my concerns about being at Panther Creek instead of
Cary, and he
never mentioned the possibility Athens Drive might be involved. We only
talked about Cary. 
This reassignment to Athens
Drive was totally out of the blue and is not fair in
so many ways. 

Please reconsider our
node’s assignment from Panther Creek. 
Students, parents, and families of our node deserve your consideration in
this matter. We will be forming a protest group of concerned and frustrated
parents and students; we will not remain silent this
time.

Thank
you,

Sharon
O’Donnell,

sjo@nc.rr.com