Reducing Enloe's magnet students

 Thank you both for your thoughtful responses.

 Find a solution that you would be happy with and still preserve individual liberty and you would be a genius.

While Mensa says my IQ is genius, I'm not a civil or social engineer. My observations of education in American society have led me to conclude several things. First, every district should be conducting a census/building needs survey. Forget the magnets. Forget attempting to balance F & R. Is the given population in a neighborhood large enough to sustain the operation of a certain school? Yes? Good. No? Close it down, sell the property, build where schools are overcrowded. Busing students in to an under-utilized school just to keep it open  makes no sense.  I don't know how many miles each of your nodes extends out from each school, but surely someone is mathematically inclined enough to develop a formula which would adjust the mileage for the rural/urban populations to determine what the right fit is to use each school to its proper capacity.

Now, after that census has been conducted, is it possible that some schools will have a larger SE population than others? Sure. So what? Wherever that population resides, the resources should be brought to THEM, not the other way around.

We are losing our sense of communities and families. Call me old fashioned, but there's nothing wrong with a child walking to school. Some people are rich, some people are poor. That's life. We all do the best with what we have. But it is the job of local government to provide the children with equal opportunity, regardless of race, income or ability. For government to say, "We can only provide equal opportunities if your child sits on a bus for an hour and 20 minutes" is unacceptable and a cop out.  If there is a school next door to a low income housing project, personally, I think that's great. That school should be given equal resources per student as any rural school. If there is criminal activity occurring at the housing complex, it is incumbent on the police to keep the area clean and safe. As the children receive a better education in a well kept neighborhood school, the crime will go down. Build pride, eliminate gangs, create opportunities. Obfuscating the issue by busing children in and out and spreading them around attempts to obscure the problems at the base. This constant reassignment makes it impossible to track a cohort of students and assess success or failure. What methods work, which teachers are the best, which cohort needs greater SE attention, which teachers should be encouraged to find other work?

I like the fact that you have a number of charter schools for those who would prefer alternative/specialized education. That's great. There should be clear choices - traditional- neighborhood based schools, charter or private. Period. Making neighborhood based schools a mish-mosh of magnet, semi-magnet, YR, traditional, just muddles the mess. Basically, your system is like mud, it covers the ground, but it's not very clear. 

"When would you say that trend began?"

I think it depends on the area.  Where I grew up in Atlanta in the 70's whites were always moving over an area to stay away from blacks.  They would move a black family into a neighborhood, the the whites would panic, and the Realtors  would buy up the houses for a song and sell them to black families for a profit.   In the 80'/90's first the Gays moved into the urban areas taking advantage of the cheap costs  and tolerance.   Young couples followed eventually having children and restarting the cycle of re-building neighborhoods.

This are is not very urban areas (like Charlotte) here ... more a collection of small cities.   From what I see in Raleigh it appears young couple are repopulating many older in-town areas but it is also a magnet for singles and retirees who want my excitement.

I think there is always a permant underclass of low income and minorities that depend on in-town service jobs and public transportation.   I am guessing the poor minority areas of the 1970's are the same ones today due to be mostly low value rentals.   Compared to Atlanta, this area appears to have missed the federal HUD build large scale ghettos movement that blights sections of some cities.   One to the popular magnet school is next to one of the few housing projects and parents seem to be comfortable with it which is encouraging and amazing.

It seems that most schools have a mixture of minorities and F&Rs because housing is mixed except for some far reaches and new area recently developed and populated by whites, asian, and indians who make up the professions working in the local high tech firms.  Affordable house is kept in check and apartments typically kept high end or 1-2 bedrooms which limits most F&R families moving to those areas.  Still I have lived in much worse segregated areas than here.

So, while you might expect a high concentration of F&Rs in the urban area, there is quite a bit more than expected in the surrounding county which is still quite rural.  I think Cary still has a couple of trailer parks which is quite retro.

Until recently, I think much of the movement has been driven by cheap gas and cheap mortages which causes people to move further and further out trying to aquire bigger and bigger homes.  As those dynamics change, I expect people to start consolidating around employments and transporation hubs again.