Student Assignment Will Fill 3 New Schools in 2008-09
December 3, 2007 - Three new elementary schools will be opening for 2008-09 and school administrators have been meeting in recent weeks across the county to share information and listen to families’ comments and questions.“We’ve been sharing information about the opening of these new schools and listening to parents’ comments at the meetings,” said Assistant Superintendent Chuck Dulaney. “We’ll use the information to develop the draft proposal that will be presented to the community later this month.”
The primary objective of growth management planning is to provide appropriate environments for teaching and learning for all students by accommodating growth, minimizing the impact of overcrowding and assigning a healthy student population to every school.
More than 75 people attended the Green Hope High meeting and crowds near that size attended the meetings at Middle Creek High and Sanderson High. About two dozen attended the meeting at Knightdale High. Dulaney spoke for about 20 to 30 minutes at each meeting and then heard comments and answered questions for about an hour.
“We received good suggestions in the community engagement meetings,” said Dulaney. “We heard about problematic node assignments that we hope to address and answered lots of questions in response to parent concerns.”
On the afternoon of Dec. 7, the draft plan for assigning students to schools for 2008-09 will be published on the school system website so that the community can review it and make suggestions. Comments will be accepted through January 1. This feedback will be used by the WCPSS Growth and Planning Department to prepare a final proposal to be presented to the Board of Education in January.
Major challenges being addressed for the 2008-09 school year include:
- Assigning students to three new schools including Sycamore Creek Elementary located in northwest Raleigh; Laurel Park Elementary located between Cary and Apex; and Mills Park Elementary located in western Cary;
- Reducing the number of schools operating at more than 100% of capacity;
- Reducing differences between schools in the percentage of students from low-income families assigned to each school; and
- Reducing differences between schools in the percentage of limited-English proficient students assigned to each school.
In addition to developing a growth management plan for the 2008-09 school year, Growth and Planning staff are currently preparing preliminary plans for the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. This will be the first time the school system will have developed assignment plans that look several years into the future. Plans will be based upon enrollment projections jointly developed with the Wake County Planning Department and the capital improvement program (CIP) that was adopted by the Board of Education in May 2006, approved by the Board of County Commissioners in July 2006 and funded by voters in November 2006.
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