Jan. 23, 2009

Reassignment plan almost finished

Wake County public school leaders reassign students for a variety of reasons. Growth tops the list, but efficient use of buildings, creating spaces for the district’s magnet school programs, transportation patterns and keeping students together as they are promoted from one school to another are also an important part of the mix.

But during the past six months – in hours of public hearings, thousands of comments, countless debates and numerous revisions – one reason has attracted a disproportionate amount of attention: diversity.

Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent of growth and planning for the district, estimates two-thirds of the students reassigned in the current plan are being moved because of growth. That means almost 17,000 of the roughly 25,500 students are being reassigned in the three-year plan based on the opening of 10 new schools and the vacancies those new schools create in surrounding areas.

But it is the district’s efforts to create diverse schools throughout the county that have attracted much of the attention. Wake tries to make sure no more than 40 percent of the students in any school qualify for subsidized lunches and no more than 25 percent score below grade level on state-mandated tests. The district uses the approach because research shows high concentrations of poverty hurt student performance.

Trying to maintain diverse schools does require reassigning students. But when that goal is combined with others such as efficient use of classroom space, keeping siblings together and creating space for magnet programs, the overall effect of the diversity policy on total reassignment numbers is difficult to even measure.

It is unusual for an urban district to still pursue diversity goals -- in North Carolina and nationwide -- which makes it an obvious target for criticism. And some arguments simply die hard.

During a recent meeting of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, board member Tony Gurley repeated a common belief that the district’s diversity policy costs the district millions in busing costs.

While Wake does spend millions on school transportation, its costs per pupil are less than other urban districts that have returned to neighborhood schools, as shown in the chart below for the 2005-2006 school year -- the most recent available statewide.

Source: NC Department of Public Instruction

For most parents, the bus ride that matters most is the one involving their child. And when something as personal as school routines are upended by a bureaucracy, diversity is quickly questioned.

School board members are expected to continue making small changes to the plan until its final approval, which is scheduled for Feb. 3. After that, school board members aren’t likely to make changes in the next three years unless they are forced by outside circumstances. They say their commitment to diverse schools won’t fade. Neither will the need to continue educating the public about its value.

Stimulus amount hard to figure

If Congress approves a stimulus package that is even close to the amounts being discussed for education, larger public school districts such as Wake County’s could receive a sizeable chunk of money.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as it is formally known, currently has more than $100 billion set aside for all levels of education. Elementary and secondary schools would receive the bulk of that. To put that figure in context, the U.S. Department of Education’s entire discretionary budget for fiscal year 2008 is $59 billion.

But trying to figure out just how much of that money will land in any single district – and when – is much harder to nail down. The bill discussed in Congress this week is broken into categories such as special education, programs that focus on students in poverty, general services, technology needs and school construction.

That means some of the money clearly won’t be distributed based on a district’s total enrollment. But some undoubtedly will, and Wake County enrolls just under 10 percent of the public school students in North Carolina.  That makes the math fairly easy when people start throwing numbers around at the state level.

For example, U.S. Representative Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, scheduled a press conference in Raleigh last week suggesting the feds pay the interest on school construction bonds as part of the stimulus package. North Carolina would be in line for an estimated $488 million under that plan. Based on enrollment, Wake could pick up a quick $48 million. Of course, $488 million is just a small piece of a $100 billion package.

Countless details will make it far more difficult to calculate the real bottom line, but as the 19th largest school district in the country, Wake could garner a measurable piece of the stimulus package. But first, Congress has to cut a check. Until then the stimulus is zero.

Noteworthy

….. About 40% of U.S. black and Latino students attend schools that are increasingly racially isolated, according to a new report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California. That has left the nation’s schools more segregated than at any time since the civil rights movement, according to the report’s author, Gary Orfield.

…Stephen Mares, principal of Daniels Middle School, was named by the Wake school board this week to be the new principal at Broughton High School. The principal’s post at Broughton is one of the most attractive in the county because of the school’s standing and history. Many students at Daniels move on to Broughton.