Wake's 2009 magnet/calendar application results

How can we organize a recall vote of the members of the Wake County School Board for with their decision on mandatory year round schooling?

two things that I would like to say:

1) Kent is NOT a part of WSCA. The open letter is not from WSCA.

2) "Many of the pain points you describe could be fixed with better data and more consistent implementation of the policies, not destruction of the policies."

Many parents have been trying to get WCPSS to do this for YEARS. This is not about busing, neighborhood schools or the diversity policy. It is about electing a school board that is responsive to the needs of students and their families.

Some of the current school board members refuse to even investigate flaws in the current implementation of the policy. Some even refuse to admit that there are flaws. Everybody is so driven by the unfounded fear that 'we' want to abolish diversity that it keeps them from improving the system. They are afraid of any chink in the armor. This shouldn't be about protecting any one policy. This should be about educating students in the best way we can. That's gotten lost.

And just as an aside, in case you weren't reading here when it being discussed--I fully supported the Lacy to Stough moves. I agree that those moves were NOT about diversity. They were about growth and it should have been taken care of 3 years ago when the moves were initially proposed.

I'm replying here to avoid the text becoming too skinny in the threaded view here on the blog.

I am confused.  Did you run the regression based on school data or individual data?  What other variables were considered?

School data.  No other variables considered.  I was looking at the correlation of school average EOG scale scores versus school F&R percentage for both ED and NED students so those are the pairings I used.

One place to look is at groups that advocate for Parental Involvement. They ALSO advocate for school equity/diversity. Apparently they see the value.

But as a way for each student’s parents to be involved or as a way to use middle class parents to compensate for the (this is a dangerously broad generalization) reduced parental involvement of low income students.  Does it help to have just any parent involved?

Bottom line, if we don’t have a diversity policy, we will have many schools with greater than 50% F&R and several as high as 80%.  I cannot imagine how that can be okay.

I don’t doubt that some schools would have high F&R without some mixing of students, but I’m not sure the extent of the problem.  Given that one-third of schools now are out of compliance with the 40% F&R limit, I’m not sure how a student assignment policy that placed a higher value on distance from the school would make things much worse.

Please tell me where that proposal is posted or re-post.

Sure, I’ll repost.

The proposal is to take the one-third of schools with the lowest F&R percentage and the one-third of schools with the highest F&R percentage.  Take the student population that was reassigned between a school from one group and into a school from the other group.  Analyze the academic progress before and after the reassignment for low income and middle class students.  This study should be done on the individual student level using software like EVAAS or something similar.

This presumes a great deal about who was moved – that they are district ‘average’ for their wealth classification.  It is a huge presumption to think personal factors are in the noise.  Also, how far down the line would the analysis be completed?  You can’t really think that change will happen in a single year?

What I’m trying to say is that this is not as important as what you think.  After all, WCPSS did a study of their own like this.  The results are here:
http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2005/0506reassignment05.pdf
The flaw in their study was in the sample size.  They only sampled about 230 students.

Let me give you an example.  Assume we’re looking at a low income student and a wealthy student.  Assume the low income student is performing at about the 15th percentile compared to state average on EOG tests.  If this student is chosen for reassignment to a lower poverty school, we can look at subsequent performance relative to state average.  If the student in later years scores in the 15th percentile, we can say that nothing changed significantly.  No progress was made in closing an achievement gap.  If the student drops to the 10th percentile, we can say that the move had negative effects.  If the student rises to the 30th percentile, the move was successful.  The same can be done with a wealthy student.  This student may be starting in the 85th percentile, but the same method would work.  We can look at data over several years, both before reassignment and after reassignment.

Sure there are personal factors involved.  One student in the study may have family factors that cause their scores to drop, etc., but with a large enough sample size it is possible to generalize.  After all, how do you think this “40 years of research” that WCPSS keeps citing as supporting policy 6200 was performed?

Taking a quick look at the methodology EVAAS uses makes me wonder if it can really measure anything in elementary grades, since it is based on prior test results.

Sure, you would have to have at least one previous test result to compare with.

What reason is given for not doing it?

Read this blog post: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/not-backing-a-diversity-study

Not to mention, if the results support diversity – you won’t trust the results anyway, so why bother?  Given that, shouldn’t an independent body do the analysis?

If the data is made public and available for scrutiny and the study methodology is sound, I would trust the results.  NC DPI would keep WCPSS honest.

This would not be the case if schools were equitable.  Magnet selection ‘bias’ is based on trying to maintain capacity and F&R rates.  It is not the diversity policy that is to blame – it is the inconsistent application of the policy.

I don’t think it is possible to make every school within 5% of 30% F&R unless you are prepared for many more 20+ mile bus rides for students.  I did an analysis and figured that a minimum of 5,700 additional students would need to be reassigned to get every school below 40% F&R.  This is the most optimistic estimate in the district’s favor assuming one-for-one student swaps could be made (i.e., I didn’t consider nodes and the fact that entire nodes of students must be moved).

This being a given, a discriminatory selection process will always be with us under the diversity policy.  If you live in the “wrong” area and/or happen to be assigned to the “wrong” base school, your chances are reduced to almost nothing.

Are you suggesting each school can choose its methodology?

No, I’m just saying that if non-magnet schools could offer the specials and AG programs that magnet schools offer, there would be less demand for magnet admission.  My older daughter is AG and we tried for admission to an AG/GT magnet and we denied.  If these services were offered at our base school, I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

I wonder, who do you think would be so upset about a 100% African-American school with 35% F&R?  And how would that realistically come about anyway?

Folks like Kahlenberg who openly admit that socioeconomic diversity is a legal way to get to the goal of racial diversity.  I admint, this probably could not happen in Wake County given that blacks are about 21% of the population here.

As for analysis, in general – please don’t think I do not welcome studies just because I am skeptical of their ability to be done.  I have actually been trying to figure out how an independent study could be conducted.  No luck yet, but I would hope that something can be done.

How do you think the “40 years of research” that WCPSS keeps referring to was done?  If we keep relying on research done up to 40 years ago in other areas, why do you say is it hard or impossible to do a study here?

Then why would they advocate for them?  Call my cynical, but at least one of these people is directly quoted as saying we should abolish the public school system.  There is no good way to interpret that quote and his stand.

For reasons of parental choice.  Why don’t you read some of Mr. Misegades views in his own words:
http://www.ullisart.com/images/Misegades_Balance_rebuttal.pdf
I wouldn’t presume to speak for him.  You probably won’t agree with him given what you have said here already, but at least you may understand some of his motivations.

I’m not going to even try to justify that “abolishing the public schools” statement because I don’t believe in that.  Others have already pointed out that he is not involved in WSCA in any form.

Nothing?  What about the Open Letter?  I know that is enough to keep me away from your meetings, at least for now.

The open letter was not done by WSCA.  It was written by the coauthors and me before I was even involved in WSCA and no coordination was done between groups.  Attributing this letter to WSCA is prejudging the group if you haven’t been to any meetings.

Or maybe it has not gone far enough. I know you feel slighted by the system because of MYR, but I really fear that you are blinded by your frustrations.  Many of the pain points you describe could be fixed with better data and more consistent implementation of the policies, not destruction of the policies.

Try getting up in a community engagement meeting and telling everyone that more reassignments should be made.  Try supporting a school board candidate that says more reassignments are needed for diversity after this latest round of 25,000 over 3 years.  We’ll see what the public thinks of that.  I don’t think it’s a winning strategy.

Perhaps I am blinded some by the handling of MYR.  I've watched while MYR seems to take precedence over all other factors including diversity and cost concerns.  I don't understand why MYR is going forward when there are so many drawbacks.  It seems to me that the school board is unable to exercise proper oversight in this regard.  Look at all the underenrolled YR schools.

Have you seen how arrogant WCPSS is acting in relation to MYR?  They are refusing to issue MYR consent forms despite the court order forcing them to obtain parental content to assign students to MYR schools.  I would think this is a violation of the court order.  They need consent to assign students to MYR schools.

I think I have been pretty clear on where I stand.

Thanks for making your views clear.

We also know that the higher the F&R rate, the lower the scores.

Yes, this is true.  However, I ran the numbers for all the elementary schools in Wake County for 2006-07 and found a correlation coefficient between EOG scores and F&R percentage of -0.64 for middle class students and -0.12 for low income students.  This tells me that lower middle class student performance is much more closely correlated with a higher school F&R percentage than it is for low income students.  If this really is the case, middle class students may be harmed more than low income students are helped by “swapping” them between low and high poverty schools.  Again, this is not “proof” but it is yet another indication that WCPSS should be doing a study.

We also have evidence (both anecdotal and empirical) that there is a positive correlation between income and parental involvement ... and we presume to know that parental involvement is a key to school success.

But is it anyone’s parent that can be involved or the student’s parent?  WCPSS treats parents like a resource that they can move around with middle class kids to help out low income population.  Don’t you think intuitively that the closer parents are to a school the more involved they are able to be at the school?

…but the data are usually collected such that you can analyze the entire country, not a particular system.  Doing something similar in Raleigh, rough guess, would cost millions of dollars between the long term data collection and the analytics.

You’re overestimating the difficulty of this.  Look at my previous proposal for a study that I posted here.  WCPSS or NC DPI can immediately do such a study for very cheap using EVAAS.  EVAAS has the capability to measure “school effects” on student achievement.  It’s customized to the students attending that school:

https://ncdpi.sas.com/evaas/help/NC/EVAAS_help_NVS_va_school.html

There is also a measure of the student’s actual vs. projected performance customized to each individual student.  This can be used to tell if students are making poor, expected, or above average performance.  Just take the huge group of students that were just reassigned, find those that were moved between low and high poverty schools and look at how the group overall did progress-wise.  Were they “helped” (met or exceeded expect progress) or “hurt” (failed to meet expected progress).  With such a large group of reassigned students, other personal student factors are lost in the noise with such a large sample size.

The methodology EVAAS uses is peer reviewed and approved by the US Department of Education.  It uses a z-score measure to compare groups just like public health studies do.  The populations do not have to be identical to run a comparison.

WCPSS could immediately do such a study and run the reports right away.  NC DPI has already purchased the software and all the data is already entered in and ready to go.  $0 cost, but they still refuse to do so.

What I am about to say may be unpopular, but I have looked at the numbers. FAR more reassignment is done primarily for capacity and secondarily for diversity.

I agree with you.  I think at least half of reassignments are done for growth and not diversity.  That said, the discriminatory impact of the diversity policy is felt not just on student assignment but other areas such as magnet and calendar selection.

One ‘equity’ point you entirely missed – equitable resources.  Capacity, location, demographics ALL play a role in resources. This, we do know!

Are you claiming that high poverty schools lack any facilities or resources provided by WCPSS that low poverty schools have?  I understand the parental involvement issue and the PTA giving, etc. is different, but again, WCPSS can’t just move kids around like pawns and not expect parents to get fed up and reduce volunteer time.

If done right, magnets can be a great tool for diversity.

In my opinion, if non-magnet schools were able to offer the selection of high quality programs that magnet schools offer, it would be very difficult to get students to leave their local school to travel far from their home to another school.  This is exactly why WCPSS restricts what non-magnet schools can offer today.

Similarly, voluntary Year Round can be a tool.  The only catch is that voluntary year round programs would also have to placed in low income areas in order to work, because it is typically the lower income families who do not like YR.  (I am not sure why.  I can make several socioeconomic assumptions.)

Agree with you 100% here.  Mandatory year-round and opt-outs have done more to reduce diversity in schools than about any other factor, in my opinion.  Just compare Sycamore Creek and Leesville with Hilburn, York and Stough.

I would like to see programs like Johnston County's with single track YR schools offering extra tutoring during track-out periods for at risk students.

This makes me think we are speaking an entirely different language.  1975?  Really?  Times have changed a bit since then.  How old were you – 5? 10?

Heh… Even worse.  I wasn’t born in 1975.  I did grow up in a school district under a federal court order to enforce racial diversity through forced busing.

Did you attend any of the presentations done by Dr. Kahlenberg when he was here?  He stated several times that socioeconomic diversity policies are a legally bulletproof way to achieve racial diversity, as if racial diversity was really the end goal despite that fact that using race in student assignment is illegal.  His analogy was to the progressive income tax.  The rich can be made to pay more taxes, but it would be illegal to make white people pay more income taxes.  (This really got on my nerves.  The education of my children cannot be compared to paying taxes.  Is he saying that my children’s education can be sacrificed for the betterment of poorer children??)  So no, I don’t agree that we are only pursuing socioeconomic diversity.  There is definitely a racial aspect to it as well.  I agree with Jenn when she said that she didn’t think folks would be happy with a 100% black school that was 35% F&R.  There would absolutely be many people with problems with that.

Kahlenberg refers to the 1966 Coleman Report in his research because it backs up the notion of racial diversity but omits reference to the 1975 follow-up report in which Coleman notes that busing for diversity failed and that it was ludicrous to attempt to mandate diversity.  That’s the only reason why I mentioned the 1975 report.  Let’s do our own study and report right here in Wake County!

As to your co-authors, I have very strong concerns when a private school trustee is professing to support neighborhood schools.

I don’t have concerns about it.  I know there are some, including some of my co-authors, who support parental school choice through more charter schools, more affordable private schools, and yes, vouchers.  It’s my opinion that WCPSS’s current policies are driving more families to charter and private schools.  About 83% of school-aged children attend public school in Wake County, down from about 90+% in the mid-1990s.  It’s been steady at 83% for many years now.  Despite the phenomenal growth in WCPSS, other alternatives (including homeschooling) have kept up and are growing just as fast.

I think that having high quality local public schools would hurt private school admissions and not help.  I don’t see advocating for neighborhood schools or school choice as being self-serving in this case.  (Vouchers, maybe…)

Are you really sure you want to join them?  There are much better ways to fix the system, within the system – not throw everything out and HOPE that something else will work better.  That is not very empirical, is it? … You might find that you actually have more in common with ‘us’ than you think.

Again, WSCA is a parent-led group.  We’re fighting to improve WCPSS.  We’re trying to change the system, not throw it out.  Look at the WSCA goals.  There’s nothing in there that is anti-diversity.  It’s just that everything has become focused on policy 6200 to the exclusion of all other factors including the wishes of families.  Mr. Dulaney has too much leeway to do whatever he and his department decide to do with student assignment.  (The school board only changed about 5% of the reassignment plan that G&P staff put together.)  Everything this district does is tied to diversity goals in some way it seems.  (Magnet admissions, calendar applications, year-round track selection, etc.)  It’s simply gone too far.

You might find that you actually have more in common with ‘us’ than you think.

Who is ‘us’?  Supporters of the status quo policies?  It seems you and I have much in common, but I want to elect school board members that are willing to attempt changes in what is going on now.  Where do you stand?  Maybe we’ll all have a better idea when more school board candidates actually announce their intentions to run.

Senator Vernon Malone died Saturday morning at his home in Raleigh.
An official cause of death has not been released, but it is believed he died from natural causes. He was 77-years-old.
Malone was currently serving his fourth term in the state Senate.
According to his Web site --established during his candidacy in the last election-- Malone was a Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly representing the state's fourteenth Senate district, including constituents
Following the news of Malone's death, several North Carolina figures issued a statement.
"The Senate, the people of Wake County and the State have lost a great advocate for education and for the future of our State," Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton said. "Throughout his life, Senator Malone was committed to public service and to making our State a better place. I am honored and proud to have served alongside Vernon Malone in the Senate, and the prayers of the entire State are with his family during this time of great loss."
And commissioners in Wake County also offered their condolences.
"Senator Vernon Malone was a man of great character," Chairman of the Wake County Commissioners Harold Webb said." He gave his heart and soul to helping other people. He worked every day to build a stronger community. He believed in working in the trenches to uplift the lives of those who could not help themselves. He believed in the value of education and he dedicated his life to making sure people of all races had the opportunity to get an education so they could live a better life. He served admirably as Chairman of the Wake County School Board, Chairman of the Wake County Commissioners and as a three-term State Senator. As Chairman of the Wake County Board, I extend my condolences to his family and friends. We have lost a fine public servant."
"Senator Vernon Malone was a pillar of public service in Wake County," Vice Chairman of the Wake County Commissioners Lyndy Brown said. "He charted a path of progress when times were tough. He provided stable and reliable leadership on our school board, our county commission and in the State Senate. He was a loving servant of God, a faithful husband and father, and a tireless public servant who lit the torch of leadership for the African American community and all of Wake County."
"Vernon and I have been friends for over 30 years," Commissioner Betty Lou Ward said. "He was a very good legislator, county commissioner and school board member, and just a wonderful person to work with. He was a really good friend, and I enjoyed my friendship with him through the years. He was also a really good friend to Wake County since he has been in the Senate, and has been a cheerleader for Wake County. His passing leaves a very big hole, and this is really a big loss. He was very much a Southern Gentleman."

Stoughparents--I am enjoying this conversation as well.

WCPSS actually has some good programs (magnet, charter, etc.) that simply aren’t necessarily as well-implemented as they could be. That does not give basis for throwing it all out and starting over.
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I agree with you and WSCA has never said that we should throw it all out and start over. I don't believe that myself, and I don't think any of the other leaders of our group would say that either.

As for parental involvement, Chuck has said on at least 3 occassions that distance doesn't matter when it comes to low income students because their parents won't participate anyway. The fact that WCPSS is willing to assign kids to schools 12, 15 or 18 miles away when there are healthy options closer to home is a big clue to me right there.

I am not so naive as to believe that if all low income kids were able to walk to school that their parents would suddenly become involved. I know that's not true. But at both of the elem schools my kids have been at (both Title 1), I have seen low income parents at the school. They are usually not the volunteers who are there every day, but they were there for a special author's tea or a musical production during the day. They were mostly single moms who were working hard to keep afloat and some were grandmas. In any case, they were there and I know that many of them wished they could be more active. I worry about those parents. Some didn't have cars and had to rely on friends to drive them or take the bus. How many times will they be able to make it a school that is 15 miles away with no direct public transportation route?

We need to think about parental participation as more than just volunteering for PTA. I know that for some kids, just having their parents come into the school for a special program is a BIG deal. It shows the kids that the parents care and that they value what they are doing in school. I agree that some could argue my sis in law's "100% participation" rule isn't necessarily doing much. But it is a start and it shows the kids and their parents that the school cares enough to at least meet with them. At the very least it doesn't let parents completely off the hook.

I know how hard some teachers, particularly Title 1 teachers, work to build trust and forge relationships with some of the at-risk kids and their families. I know of 2 staff members that went to deliver food to families and to check up on them who were at first regarded with suspicion. When they realized that they weren't there to call social services on them or tell them something bad about their kids, they started to open up. It was a slow process but those families now trust these 2 staff members and know that they are there to help. The first few times they went to this neighborhood, gang members on the street corner flashed a gun at them as a warning and gave them menacing looks. Now those same thugs give them a nod when they see their car drive up.

What will happen to those kids when they get reassigned to another school. Will the new school even have Title 1 services period? Will the new school have teachers who are able to handle their special needs? How long will it take for somebody to build trust with them again? Will anybody at the new school even try and have the perseverance that the earlier staff did? Will those kids feel abandoned?

Chuck and the BOE are aware of these instances and it just doesn't seem to matter. We will never get all of those families to care or trust the system, but we *can* get some of them to. We're fools if we don't continue to try.

Shank--I take no offense at all by Eric answering for me. We have spoken at length about this and work together with the WSCA. He answered as I would have, or will below.

Stoughparent was confused about my statement and I can understand that. This will be a little long, but here goes. lol

Last year, I noticed that very few of the schools that were over 50% F&R were included in the reassignment plan. If WCPSS is operating under their diversity/no school should be over 40% policy, then why weren't they addressing any of the schools in the 50s, 60s and 70s? To me, those schools should be the #1 priority under this policy, followed by the ones in the 40s.

In the same assignment plan, I noted that there were several moves being made in order to raise F&R at some schools under the guise of the 'comparable schools'. Where were these kids coming from if they weren't coming out of the very high F&R schools? I went through the entire reassignment plan and looked for each and every node that was over 40% F&R. I counted the kids in those nodes and looked at what school they were getting moved out of and which school they were moving to. I also looked up the distance for each of the moves.

What I found was that about 2/3 (I would have to look up the exact numbers in my huge folder of notes/research) of the low income kids were being moved out of a school that was already healthy. If a school is already healthy, then why are we moving kids out of there? Some of the distances were unbelievable. Downtown F&R kids getting moved from Underwood (3 miles from home) to Green Hope (18 miles from home). The plan noted that this was done in order to raise GHE's F&R to make it more comparable to surrounding schools. Kids getting bused an additional 15 miles out of an already healthy school in the 20s just to raise Green Hope's number?

It was a little less than 1/3 of the low income kids that actually got moved out of a high poverty school. I just don't get disrupting the very students who often need the most stability if they are not gaining something from it. How could this possibly be a positive move for them (underwood to GHE)? What was the priority placed on this move? They weren't at a high poverty school. They weren't at a low performing school. They weren't ESL kids at a high ESL school. They were moved solely to raise GHE's F&R, which is unjustifiable to me.

Later that year (summer 08), I got in contact with a woman who was also working on schools issues. She told me about a meeting she was at in Cary. I think it was one of the 'area impact meetings' that GM held before this year's assignment plan. Anyway, somebody brought up the new SAS software that is going to be used in reassignment. In the software, each of the factors of Policy 6200 can be weighted to give them more or less priority than each other. I forget how many factors there are in the policy, but it lists things like proximity, health of the school, and feeder patterns. Chuck said that there are no priorities used in the reassignment because the BOE hasn't given him any priorities. All of the factors would be weighted equally in the SAS software.

I questioned Chuck and the BOE members about this in an email. Was this really true? No priorities in the assignment factors? Or were there priorities and somehow Chuck wasn't aware of them? I then gave the example of the Underwood to GHE move and asked them what the priority was for that move. I also asked them about the 'comparable schools' policy. Was there an actual definition for this policy? What schools were considered comparable to each other? I brought up Stough and Lacy--Stough's F&R was twice that of Lacy's yet nothing was done in that assignment plan to lower Stough's. Were they considered comparable? Is it a distance thing? Is it geographic?

I heard back from my BOE rep and from Chuck. If I remember correctly, Chuck said that there was no definition of the policy and that they had no set 'rules'. No boundaries or distances. My BOE rep referred me to Policy 6200 to find info on 'comparable schools'. (There was no definition there).

I was at a BAC meeting this fall where Chuck was the guest speaker. I asked him about the SAS software and how they were going to prioritize the factors in the assignment policy. He said something to the effect of: 'The BOE has set it up very well for themselves. They haven't set any priorities for us to use so that they don't have to be responsible for the priorities.' I must not have been the only person to bring this up because at the Community Engagement Mtg at WF-R HS (I think) this past fall, he brought up how there were no priorities because the BOE couldn't agree on priorities.

Really? They can't agree that addressing schools over 50% should be a priority? They can't agree that busing kids 18 miles from home solely in order to raise a school's F&R should NOT be a priority?

A few months later there was an article in the N&O where Chuck said something about how there weren't any priorities or hard and fast 'rules' for reassignment. That it all came down to value judgments. Whose value judgments? I'd rather it be the value judgments of an elected BOE than of a man who wasn't elected and who has his own biases. I have no doubt that Chuck has good intentions. I do not think that he is evil or sets out to hurt families, but I do believe that he is strongly driven by his own beliefs and agenda. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be busing kids those kids 18 miles from home.

I know this post is very long and if you got through it all, I thank you and applaud you. So to answer your question, Stoughparents, I think that its good to have a diversity policy. I think that WCPSS has screwed up the implementation in a major way. They have placed their priorities in the wrong place and not on student achievement. They have allowed politics to dominate--whether its official party politics or making sure they don't tick off certain influential neighborhoods.

I won't answer the 'open letter' question yet. I'll give y'all a break from my long-windedness. Thank you for keeping an open mind about us and our mission. You may still ultimately not agree with us but if you come away with a better understanding of who we are (or aren't) then I will be happy. :-D

stoughparents--I am a member of the WSCA steering committee. I have been to every meeting we have held and have been involved with all of our mission statements, presentations, etc. We have not made 'bedfellows' with anybody. I have never met the man to whom you are referring. I have never communicated with him on my own or through WSCA. Last I heard, he was not even a member of our organization, period.

I spoke last night in Garner about this very issue. We are non-partisan and we are independent. There is no 'man behind the curtain'. Nobody is pulling our strings. We have Dem and Rep supporters. Political ideologies and egos MUST be checked at the door if we are to find any solutions. With us, what you see is what you get: parents who have differing political views, live in different parts of the county, have different 'issues' with the system and a wide variety of solutions. We are not paid. We are not pushing an 'agenda'. We are tying to figure out how to provide the best education for each and every WCPSS student.

I agree with you that diversity is one tool of many. Unfortunately, WCPSS values it above all else. Why else are the majority of low income children being shuffled from one healthy school to another, even 'healthier' school to raise that school's F&R? Less than 1/3 of the low income kids in last year's plan were moved out of a school with more than 40% F&R. One group of low income ESL kids was removed from Penny Road (F&R in the 20s) and reassigned to Davis Drive. This was done over the objections of staff at Penny Road who argued that they were finally making connections and earning trust from these particular families. They were making progress with these children and asked that they not be moved. They were moved anyway--in order to raise Davis Drive's F&R.

That is just one example of many where the needs of the children are not taken into account nor are the opinions of the teachers and staff who work with the students.

I would love to have the chance to speak with you about WSCA. Please email me if you are interested in chatting online, on the phone or in person. Like I said in an earlier post, we welcome everybody to the table. We're not interested in making the school system better for only some people, but for all students and their families. We cannot do that without hearing from everybody. voiceforequity@gmail.com

http://wake.mync.com/site/wake/news/story/32128/wake-school-budget-cuts-becoming-reality1

Principal Robin Wahl has had to tell 17 employees they may not have a job after June 30

I have a rising 6th grader with a base at Carroll Middle (Lynn Road is his elementary base). Is there a way to find out how many kids from a specific elementary school who applied to magnets "got out?" Every parent I have spoken to at Lynn Road with a rising 6th grader (and also applied to a magnet) was denied magnet and/or year-round options. Thanks -