School Board Briefed on Multi-Year Student Assignment Process
August 18, 2008 - Wake County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent for Growth and Planning Chuck Dulaney briefed the school board for the first time on the Multi-year Student Assignment process during their August 19th meeting.
Currently under development, the Multi-Year Student Assignment plan will span three years and should provide advanced notice of where specific attendance nodes will be assigned. This is the first time WCPSS has sought to provide an assignment plan that covers more than one year.
WCPSS will open 10 new schools between 2009 and 2011. Construction timelines and new forecasting tools allow the Growth and Planning Department to map out attendance areas for these schools in advance. Not only do these 10 schools need to be filled, the schools losing students to populate the new schools will also receive new students to help alleviate overcrowding and balance enrollment at additional schools.
“Wake County is growing rapidly, but that growth happens at different rates around the county” Dulaney said. “We build schools in high growth areas and that necessitates filling those schools as efficiently as possible.”
Currently, nine regional planning groups – consisting of parents, teachers and principals – in the impacted areas are meeting to share ideas, offer suggestions and discuss consequences of a multi-year assignment plan. The Growth and Planning Department will then use those ideas to help devise a draft plan.
“We have heard from many, many parents that peer group continuity, groups of children moving together from elementary to middle to high schools, is very important to them,” Dulaney said. “A multi-year assignment plan allows us to better define and plan school feeder patterns and achieve peer group continuity.”
The draft plan will be released in late October, with Community Engagement Meetings to follow in November. After receiving public comment, a final plan will be issued in mid-December, with school board approval to likely follow in January.