Feb. 4, 2010        

Parents to board: “Don’t mess with our schedules”    

For weeks now, school board Chairman Ron Margiotta has been saying he felt most parents would prefer to keep the school calendar they have – either year-round or traditional – rather than upend family schedules. He got that one right.

After hours of school board debate and roughly $10,000 spent on surveys, preliminary results this week show 81 percent of parents would prefer to keep their current school calendar. Participation was light with just 28 percent of all public school parents responding.

Board members have said they aren’t likely to convert any school without the participation of at least one-third of the parents from any given school. Fifty-four schools met or exceeded that threshold. But parents at only three of those schools – Wakefield Elementary, Salem Middle and Leesville Middle – said they would prefer to change their calendar.

The new school board majority, which has made parental choice a large part of its agenda, must now decide how to respond to those schools. Traditional calendars accommodate fewer students than staggered year-round schedules, which is why converting those three schools could mean reassigning as many as 570 students.

The two middle schools are also fed by year-round elementary schools, meaning middle school conversions would create a mismatch in the feeder pattern. Parents at those  elementary schools did not want to change calendars.

Somewhat lost in the focus on school calendars were overall results showing an overwhelming number of parents are satisfied with their schools. While roughly half would prefer traditional calendars, 94.5 percent of parents said they were satisfied with their school regardless of the calendar.

The message was underscored by the fact that middle-class white families assigned to year-round schools were overrepresented in the voluntary survey.

  ..

The board will continue to gather information at public hearings during the next three weeks before deciding whether to convert any schools. The hearing schedule can be found here.

Layoffs coming to balance school budget           

About 75 to 100 school system employees are expected to be laid off in the coming months to help balance the school district’s budget, according to Chief Business Officer David Neter.

All of the cuts will come from central service areas such as payroll, technology services, maintenance, security and human resources. No teachers will be cut, but classrooms will be affected given the reduced support from central services.

The grim outlook for 2010-2011 is based on flat to declining revenues and an expected increase of about 4,000 new students. The district will open four new schools next year to help handle the growth.

State cuts for next year are already known based on the bi-annual budget approved by the General Assembly last year. Local funding from the county is expected to remain even at best. County commissioners were told last week they will be facing an $18 million budget shortfall for the coming year.

Superintendent Del Burns told department heads in November to identify $20 million in cuts from central service jobs. Neter said he hopes those cuts, which include the layoffs, will cover the school system’s budget gap. All vacant positions will be eliminated.

The school board asked for this week’s budget update as part of its effort to reduce costs and expenses.

Stability meets parental choice

Elected in part to deliver student stability and parental choice, new school board members found themselves in the uncomfortable position this week of trying to balance one interest against the other.

At issue was whether to reassign more than 400 students to make room for families who are expected to request a different school calendar next year. The board approved a resolution at its last meeting promising “every effort will be made” to give parents the school calendar of their choice.

Board members were told two weeks ago that delivering on that promise would probably require moving some students. But the idea of approving reassignments without knowing for sure whether parents would request the vacated seats left the board feeling a bit squeamish.

Families will start making choices next week on what schools they want to attend, so ideally all families should be aware of new assignments before then.

The board, however, decided to delay any reassignments until it knows more about the demand for year-round and traditional calendar seats.

Assistant Superintendent Chuck Dulaney said the decision means the system will still make every effort to provide families the school calendar of their choice, but the choices offered might not be as close to home as they would prefer.

Support growing for common academic standards

The national push to create a core of common education standards picked up an important commercial endorsement this week.

E.D. Hirsch, founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and the driving force behind publications that define what all students should know to be “culturally literate,” said his foundation will align its work to better match the proposed national core curriculum.  

According to an article in Education Week, the decision by Core Knowledge “appears to be the first of what observers anticipate will be many bids by a variety of groups and businesses to adapt or distribute curriculum materials for the common academic standards.” Put another way, textbook publishers could soon fall in line.

Forty-eight states, including North Carolina, have agreed to support the effort to create national standards. The work is being coordinated by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

A common set of rigorous standards that allows the public to understand how schools compare nationally and internationally is one of the key elements of a report issued by Wake Education Partnership in 2009. The report describes what a world-class school system would look like in Wake County. It can be found here.

Noteworthy…

… Several students from Southeast Raleigh High School spoke during the public comment section of this week's board meeting, which was a departure from previous meetings where speakers from Enloe High dominated the student roster. The message from both schools is the same: “Do not remove diversity from our schools.”

… Fourteen Wake County Magnet Schools were named Magnet Schools of Excellence or Magnet Schools of Distinction by the Magnet Schools of America. The schools of excellence are Bugg, Conn, Joyner, Millbrook and Wiley elementaries as well as Ligon Middle School and Garner High. The press release can be found here.

… The strength of North Carolina’s charter school law ranks 32nd in the nation, according to a report issued this week by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The alliance is a national group created to promote the growth of charter schools. North Carolina scored well in its willingness to let a wide range of groups start charters, but the report said the cap of 100 schools statewide, lack of funding and inadequate standards hamper meaningful growth. Wake County has 13 charter schools, more than any other county in the state.

Wake Education Partnership is a 501(c)(3) non-profit created in 1983 to support public schools, in part by educating the community on current school issues. Most of its financial support comes from local business. Send comments to Tim Simmons, VP Communications, at  tsimmons@wakeedpartnership.org