2. Placement of seats given on priority of educational needs as follows:

• 1^st placements to - F&R and "needy * " students siblings up until 40% of seats are filled.
• 2^nd placements to - F&R and "needy * " students up until 40% of seats are filled.
• 3^rd placements to - Geographically near nodes applicants up until a further 40% of seats are filled (siblings first)
• 4^th placements to – all other applicants in qualification pool.
• 5^th placements to - "in county" transfer requests when seats are vacant.

3. Transport must be provided to all F&R & needy students to all destinations. Transportation must be provided to all traditional schools from the node to the node’s qualification pool schools. For magnets this may include express busing.

4. Growth Management and Reassignment of nodes must happen only when a significant change in socioeconomic make up of a node occurs, if a new school is opened or if other significant changes. All reassignments of nodes must be public information for at LEAST 1 year of discussion before final vote. All parents and future parents must be informed or proposed reassignment by mail 6 months before final vote. Final vote must be reported to parents 6 months before actual reassignment of node. During discussion year public hearings, meetings and discussions must take place at nearest WCPSS building to all nodes affected. All information gleaned at such meetings must be made public (on web and hard copy at school(s) effected). Public feedback must be reported directly and correctly back to school board without filtering any responses. Therefore all growth management plans must be prepared in advance for the next 2-3 years.

5. Feeder patterns must be used and any changes to feeder patterns must follow public input regulations as stated in growth management.

1. Engage the public & local municipalities in reforming school assignment process (facilities planning and growth data.) Towns should have a voice and presence in this process. Establish new process of inclusion for soliciting and presenting community assignment data. Web access, and community information centers throughout Wake.

2. Formulate and publish a long term plan for assignment that specifies detail for each community - no one should be in the dark regarding their node and what the anticipated assignment road map looks like, with a 5-10 year window (revisited and updated annually). Establish easily accessible and understandable repositories for assignment plan & data. All assignment related information should be contained in same area for easy access.

3. Realign administration responsibilities so that assignment and facilities planning management are on the same team. Coordinate growth planning with land banking and school siting.

4. Assignment Patterns and Choice: Implement contiguous base assignment patterns, reassess current assignment maps. Implement managed choice plan with priority given to consideration of parental choice regarding traditional base, year round, and magnet options.

5. Expand resources as needed for desirable programs and high needs areas.

Administrators believe all children can learn: Qualified administrators who set high standards for all children and work to ensure the support they need to attain standards are in place.

Resources: Adequate resources are available to schools who serve the neediest students. Strategies to achieve this may include better planning, land banking, resources allocated according to need.

School buildings: School buildings are adequate for the student population in order to ensure safe, orderly and caring schools. Strategies to achieve this may include better long term planning, land banking, improved work with municipalities.

1. Modify "Socio-Economic" criteria (SEC) to be more in line with reality. WCPSS SEC is one of the prime reasons that the reassignment in Wake County is so disruptive. The nature of the growth (middle income Caucasians) in the county does not adhere to WCPSS goals, but that is reality. Do we have to advertise and recruit, or even subsidize people of the "proper" SEC in order to build schools where we need them? NO. Wake County's SEC is a "goal", and it is just that. It is not mandatory to the point that children need to be shipped back and forth daily, across the county and back. This method not only lacks common sense, but it angers parents, and it costs taxpayers more money (particularly considering the current economic condition of state and local budgets). The costs of the current policy far outweigh its potential benefits.

2. Long-range planning is needed. The WCPSS has only a short-term planning process. Problems arise because the short-term plans are not keeping up with overall growth. A long-term apparatus needs to be developed, and the County department needs to work closely with local planning departments, to ensure accurate growth estimates are obtained. If Wake County can coordinate subdivision and development planning with school building, far less reassignments will be needed. Growth does not occur in a vacuum. Development has to be approved, and approval should hinge on the accommodation of school children at that time, BEFORE it's too late to do anything about it. Developers should be encouraged or required to include land for schools in their developmental proposals. If we wait until development has already started, land values increase, and the opportunity is lost to acquire school sites for free or at a reasonable cost.

1. Implement a managed choice plan that allows for parental choice of a geographically close traditional base with an expanded base option for year round or magnet schools. Plan would take many different components into account in reference to student placement (i.e. time spent on a bus, stability, diversity) but the "weight" of these components would be determined by what the community deems most important.

2. Replace the staff driven re-districting plan with a community driven re-districting plan where assignment decisions are based on the majority views of the residents in our community. Parental involvement to the fullest.

3. Allocate resources based on need. Make this part of the managed choice plan from it's inception so that needy schools will have a guarantee of smaller class sizes, the most experienced teachers, the most highly compensated teachers and the smallest student to teacher ratios.

4. Every student should have equitability in the stability of their assignment regardless of the type of school the student attends.

5. Develop a long term plan for assignment and school siting by working with census data and data from the towns regarding population growth and location of population booms. Bank land for future use. If site is not feasible down the line, make a tidy profit on it's sale.

1. Eliminate all node numbers, and refer instead to actual neighborhoods using the commonly acknowledged names for historic or planned communities, subdivisions, and housing developments. The current system of dividing the county into a bewildering number of "nodes" instead of talking about developments and neighborhoods creates an environment where no one knows precisely which group of kids are assigned where. The current system also masks from parents and elected officials which neighborhoods in which communities are affected by proposed changes to the student assignment plan. Furthermore, the current system allows a single neighborhood to be divided along arbitrary lines, with children from one neighborhood assigned to multiple schools. This system is confusing to elected officials, and it creates anger and distrust among parents.

2. Assign students into clusters of schools instead of a single school, with all children from one neighborhood, subdivision, or housing development being assigned to the same school cluster. Divide the elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools into clusters and assign neighborhoods to the clusters in a way that will create an overall cluster population that has the number and demographic profile of students that WCPSS believes promotes the best academic environment within that group of schools. Cluster five elementary schools per cluster, four middle schools per cluster, and three high schools per cluster. Ensure that for each student, the geographically closest school to where that child lives is one of the schools in his or her assignment cluster.

3. Allow parents to choose which schools in the cluster they want their children to attend, in priority rank order. For elementary school clusters, parents would pick three of the five schools as acceptable to them, rejecting two schools. At the middle school level, parents would pick two or three middle schools that were acceptable to them, rejecting one or two schools. For the high school level, parents and students would pick two of the schools as being acceptable to them. No parent who returns a priority order ballot would have their children assigned to any school they did not indicate was acceptable to them, for whatever reason. Students who do not have a priority order ballot returned could be assigned to any school in the cluster, but not to a school outside of the cluster they were initially assigned to. This would allow parents who had a strong preference to gain some control over where their children would attend school, while allowing the administration to ensure no one school was oversubscribed. This also allows parents who have no strong preference to opt out of the ballot process and leave their children's assignment up to the school system.

4. Open all magnet schools and year-round schools to all students in the county. Anyone could apply to any of these schools during the application process. With expanded choice options throughout the system, it should be possible to allow anyone to apply to any of these schools, provided that parents were willing to provide or coordinate transportation. Eliminating tracks and caps would take off some of the pressure in the system. As new schools are opened, expand the number of magnet and year round schools offered as needed.

5. Empower school guidance counselors, principals, or other staff in local schools to educate parents on how to participate in the cluster assignment choice ballot process. The current system leaves parents frustratingly unable to seek advice from the school officials they are most familiar with-the staff who work in the schools their children attend. In the proposed system, parents and school system employees could become partners in creating the most acceptable and beneficial learning environment for our kids. This is something everyone wants. Instead of fighting over specific assignments, we could all work together to strengthen all the schools in the county. By expanding the choice options, parents would gain a greater stake and become more involved in the process. This would make them become stronger advocates for WCPSS in general, and more likely to support specific bond referendums to gain needed resources for the WCPSS to use in educating our children.

1. Change to a system guided by parental choice

2. Build schools where the growth is

3. Work with local towns to improve long-term planning

4. Eliminate forced busing/involuntary assignment

5. Reform "lottery" to a real lottery for year-round/magnet

6. Promote diversity by choice into (magnet) and out of Raleigh (not by force)

7. Allocate resources based on need

1. Establish 10 ten long-term plan, which is updated each year.

2. Establish Land banking for future schools.

3. Establish school retirement/upgrading plan for life of school.

4. Establish annual maintenance plan for each building.

5. Develop 5 year assignment plans, updated annually, with emphasize on stability of current residents.

6. Development Seattle School Zoning, Regional zoning concept, built around 5 regions, and high school zoning for elementary through middle schools.

7. Establish school governance committees for each school, zone, and region to review budgets, plans and assignment plans monthly, quarterly and annually.

8. Establish open and direct access to WCPSS leadership at school, region, zone and county level that includes published e-mail and phone numbers.

9. Establish open public grievance committee to heard all items in contest, with approval or removal authority.

10. Establish standard levels of attendance for each school building, with max caps at 110%, and NO Trailers. Use commercial and community buildings to house excesses until schools could be established.

11. Make all schools magnets!

12. Make assignments based upon published prioritized listings with lottery caps for each school.

13. Base attendance caps on achievement percentages, i.e. - 100% achievement yield 100% building cap; 70% achievement yields 70% building cap.

14. Move all center office professional and support staff to lost achieving schools until such time that 100% achievement is obtained.

15. Required all staff of WCPSS to work in schools a particular percentage per pay scale - superintendent 20 hours classroom per month; principal 8 hours per week; non-teaching professional 6-8 hours per month; classified staff 4 hours per month!

16. Empower taxing authority to school board, up to increases of 5% per year.

17. Open school board races to county wide elections, similar to county commission elections.

18. Require a vote majority of 80% of board to assignment plans in contest.

19. Require assignment plans to be read and voted on at 3 open public board meetings for approval.

20. Make all schools tax exempt agencies.

21. Provide tax credits to school teachers equal to a percentage of their salary and experience:

• 5% for new through 5 years
• 10 % for 6 through 10 years
• 15% for 11 through 15 years
• 20% for 16 through 20 years
• 25% maximum for over twenty years teaching

1. (This helps in giving choice.) When a new school opens, rather than simply assigning a bunch of folks to the new school, give the folks a choice. The people should be able to choose between the old and the new school. Not just for that year but from then on. Given that these schools tend to be close to each other anyway, the same bus routes should be able to take the children to both schools. This is similar to the Montgomery county's "school zone" choice. Another way to think about this would be to group schools that are close to each other (so that the same bus route can serve the schools) and give the choice to the people assigned to those schools (they get to choose among those schools).

1. Allow grandfathering for all reassigned students at any grade level, provided parents provide transportation to the previously assigned school. Grandfathering is already allowed for rising 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 grades. By expanding this to include all grades and allowing grandfathering to be used even when reassignment is used to fill new schools, parents truly have a choice provided they are willing to bear the burden of providing transportation. With this is place, you would eliminate a significant number of reassignment complaints. In addition, you force parents to shoulder the cost of avoiding reassignment, helping spread responsibility for managing school assignment.

2. Redraw and balance all nodes in Wake County. Nodes have not been redrawn in at least 10 years. As a result, some nodes have grown to be huge, so large that they cannot be reassigned without dramatically affecting the schools they are coming from and going to. Other small nodes are continuous candidates for reassignment because their small size makes them easy to move and the few parents affected cannot get a voice in the process. To fix this imbalance, WCPSS should redraw every node in the county to ensure that node size is no longer a factor in selecting nodes for reassignment. This shares the burden of reassignment across all families equally.

1. The school board needs to find different avenues for reaching the public, especially to the specific areas in which re-assignment is being proposed, BEFORE the decision is made. Examples but not limited to, publish in the different local papers for each town, place something in the electric bills, send letters home with students, use the community bulletin board on TV but send out flyers to the schools letting the public know this will be a way o communicating. The public needs information before decisions are made and the school board should be open to input from the public prior to decisions being made.

2. In the areas where re-assignment has to take place, if the school board could come out to those communities, small groups if needed, and meet with those areas, with the community, for their input and ideas. Get and consider the input of the community before decisions are made, not after. Allow the public to have input, brain storm WITH the board and allow the public to have some control over their own community instead of telling them what is going to be done. The public may have some other ideas of how to solve the problem that the board has not thought of because they are not in that community.

3. Follow the policy of the % of F&R in each school. The Garner community is way out of balance as a whole, and the no more than 40% in more that 6 of our schools.

4. Implement board policy to have a long-range or projected plan, for school assignment, for at least 15 years ahead and have that plan in one document.

5. Let 5th grade, 8th grade, 11th grade and 12th grade have the option to stay where they are when re-assignment has to take place. Do not require them to move if they do not want to move but give them the option to move if they want to. A deadline for their decision would need to be established so the board and schools can properly plan for staffing. If you do not get a response from families after they have been well informed, then they are assigned to what is best for the school.

Problem statement: WCPSS currently combines diversity by choice (via the magnet schools) and diversity by force (base school assignments at schools located as much as a 45 minute bus ride away from the student’s home.) This is clearly inequitable. Students at the far reaches of the county are too distant from the center-county magnet schools to allow these students practical access to the specialized elective classes (including academically gifted classes) that many would prefer. (To make matters worse, elective classes in non-magnet schools are intentionally minimized in order to reduce competition between traditional schools and magnet schools.) Low-income students living in the center of the county may either be assigned to a nearby magnet school as their base assignment, or they are likely to be assigned to a distant suburban school for the purposes of providing diversity. If the parents of a low-income child living in one of diversity-busing base assignment areas genuinely feels that a program magnet would be better for their child, they face very low odds of getting their child accepted, since the majority of program-magnet seats are reserved for children from middle income neighborhoods. This is grossly unfair, and totally outside the spirit of the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision that created the goal of achieving diversity within our schools.

The burden of providing diversity by force is borne primarily by the lower-income inner-city students. Other losers in the current assignment system include students at the far reaches of the county, who do not have practical access to the magnet schools, and suburban students around the "outer rim" who face relatively frequent reassignment, sometimes in order to make up the "middle income" component of schools outside their communities that have been vacated by local residents choosing magnet schools. Due to Wake County’s 890 square mile area, the magnet schools have, in essence, become an entitlement program for middle-income students living near the center of the county.

1. Consider a "Consortium"-type assignment system such as is used in the Rockville, MD schools by dividing the county up into 5-6 geographic wedges. Spread magnet or signature programs among each "wedge"

2. Improve long term planning. WCPSS should be able to tell us when and where projected schools are planned, and where the projected students will come from. This should be based upon population projections provided by the county and municipal planning boards. This should be a dynamic plan, which is expected to have some changes made as it is updated yearly, but it will give families some reasonable expectations to have for their children’s school assignments. The public should have knowledge of the plans, and the ability to provide meaningful input.

3. Work at re-gaining trust. Many parents have lost trust in WCPSS due to last minute wheeling-and-dealing over reassignments and WCPSS reneging on promises made. Examples:

• When year-round magnet schools were first introduced to Wake County, we were promised that attendance at year-round schools would be on a voluntary basis only. Now several areas (typically low income areas) have been assigned to year-round schools as their base assignment, regardless of personal hardships this may cause to families.
• Growth in the western end of Wake County has been happening for years. Knowledge of the growth pattern was clearly available to the public. However, siting of schools in this area was ignored until it reached the crisis stage. Instead of building new schools within this area, WCPSS chose to build schools on the busable "outer rim" which was already adequately served by existing schools. This type of poor decision-making makes the public very distrustful of WCPSS’s judgment and less likely to pass bond issues without explicit information on what WCPSS plans to do with requested funding.

4. Plan ahead to help prevent the problem of "Have" and "Have Not" schools.

• WCPSS: Provide needs-based funding (providing higher per-pupil expenditures to schools with higher proportions of needy students to allow smaller class sizes, extra resource people, etc)
• Parents/PTAs/Communities: These groups should work together to help equalize the non-school system-based funding. Options include:

• "Sister school" programs, whereby the PTA from a higher-income based school will pair with the PTA from a lower income school. Both PTAs should work together to consider the needs of students at both schools. Fundraisers would raise funds for both schools, and volunteers would be encouraged to consider working not only in their base school, but in the school where the need is greatest. (This would be compatible with a consortium-based assignment system, since the sister schools would then be relatively close to one another, and the children from both schools would be likely to cross paths with one another later in middle or high school.)
• Require all school PTAs who wish to purchase goods or equipment for their school to provide a percentage of the funding cost to a county-wide (or consortium wide) general fund. That is, for expenditures over a certain amount (say, $500), the PTA would be expected to provide a given percentage (say, 20%) in funding over the actual purchase amount to a general funding pool. The actual percentage might vary on a sliding scale, based upon the relative income levels of the schools. Schools with a high level of low-income students would be eligible to request grants from the general fund to provide projects at their school, provided that demonstrate need and a given amount of "sweat equity."

5. Consider dual-assignment zones. Obviously, some children have benefited from being bused to schools outside their communities. If this works for their families, they should not be denied this opportunity. When base school assignments are re-drawn, the possibility of dual-assignment zones should be considered. That is, students from a given node could be assigned to a base school within their community, or have to option to continue traveling to a more distant school. They would be expected to state their preference for one or the other school before the beginning of the school year, perhaps at the same time magnet applications are entered, in order to allow transportation planning. This system should be compatible with the consortium concept (except perhaps where existing diversity busing assignments are too distant to be considered within a reasonable geographic area for a consortium.)

6. Assignment Areas:

• Wherever possible, the assignment area of a school should have contiguous boundaries, and should not have isolated enclaves or assignment islands.
• Consider feeder patterns from elementary to middle school to high school. The assignment area for a given elementary schools should not be split among multiple middle schools. Similarly, the assignment areas for middle schools should not be split among multiple high schools

One main issue right now for the school board is a lack of trust from the community. They need to focus efforts to regain the parents’ trust. Becoming more open, flexible and efficient would help the cause.

• Incorporate in-depth community involvement in the decision making process for assignment process, site selection, boundary changes, and planning and design of new and modernized facilities. All school systems examined have a strong focus on community and parent involvement and collaborate to brainstorm solutions. The school board needs to develop this concept.
• Longer range planning (10-15 years out) will help to know exactly where schools will be and where houses will be built.
• Main departments such as: facilities management and operations, student assignment, and transportation need to communicate and work together for increased efficiency. My understanding now is that they do not coordinate activities.
• Planning should be reviewed annually and have rolling 10-15 year period. Cannot make a decision and think that 5 years from now it still applies.

• Controlled open enrollment within geographic area, which provides equalizing educational opportunities. I like the idea of drawing up a geographic area in which students can choose any school in that area. Students would only be bussed in this area. Of course the opportunities need to be somewhat equal for all students as much as possible. If the student wanted to attend a program out of the area, then they would have to apply and then provide own transportation.
• I believe that it is impossible to obtain 100% socio-economic balance at every single school and still provide neighborhood school, no bussing etc. I think that at times, it is an impossible task. If the board changes the assignment process and a school has more than its share of free and reduced lunch students, then I think options should be considered. (Think outside the box! Examples include: incentives for teachers, or extra funding for the school).
• Provide high school middle school and elementary school program options. (Seattle)

• The school board’s decisions need to be aligned with their goals and objectives, which don’t always appear to be the case.
• Decisions should not have "hidden agendas" (like to deter growth).
• The board's criteria used for decision making should reflect not only their objectives, but also what parents’ priorities are. Most of the school districts that were examined incorporated the communities’ priorities into their decision-making criteria. Wake county Public school system does not appear to consider the parents' priorities. They focus on a select few objectives to the detriment of others. Along with diversity and socio-economic balance, which is their focus, the following need to be added to their decision making criteria:
  • Maintain neighborhood school concept. Keep neighborhoods intact.
  • Minimize transportation cost and maximize student walk-in.
  • Maintain continguous boundaries. Isolated areas within another attendance area are undesirable.
  • Minimize number of boundary changes, and the number of students that change schools.
  • Stability
    

• Longer range planning is needed.
• Obtain accurate and current data from appropriate resources for most efficient decision-making.
• Site acquisition far in advance. Develop landbank.
• Most school districts examined received land from developers. Wake County needs to think about doing this also.
• Maryland district - the school worked with county planning board to plan for 10-20 year period. School sites are carved out of subdivisions as they are being planned. Wake County should do the same.
• Priority is to build schools where students live, not bus, and maintain diversity objective.