Northside Elementary (Chapel Hill) Opinions (Carrboro: apartment, houses, neighborhoods)

[usafstud]

Hi,

Wanted to get some thoughts/opinions from parents who's children attend Northside and professional educators on Northside Elementary.

We moved to Chapel Hill this month with our five year old who is to start kindergarten. Currently residing in a apartment zoned for Mary Scroggs while still house hunting. We have been house hunting since May 2019 in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools district that has 1.5+ acre, 3k sq/ft in $500-700K range and built after 2000. I initially stayed away from houses zoned in Northside Elementary due to their test scores. But may need to look at homes zoned for Northside to have an 1.5+ acre lot.

I know Northside is relatively a new school in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools district. While the school district is rated one of the best district in the state, Northside's test score is subpar. I been told by some that the performance of the school will improve in the next few years as the rezoning in the past will stabilize and result in academic performance improvement.

Link to test score:
https://ncreportcards.ondemand.sas.c...ar=2018&lng=en

Thanks in advance

[poppydog]

I don't have kids in elementary any more, but IME all the schools in CHCCS are good. My kids went to Carrboro Elementary, which was a Title 1 school at the time (maybe still is). If you read to your kid and engage with them I think they can flourish in any CHCCS school. The teachers at Carrboro Elementary were stellar. It's just that some kids don't have the background and support that other kids do and that affects the test scores. Northside was built when my kids were in elementary and we didn't know if our neighborhood would be zoned for it or not. It would have been slightly closer than Carrboro Elementary. I would have been fine with my kids going there.

[TarHeelNick]

Northside gets a bad rep among CHCCS parents for a variety of reasons..

My personal "sociological" take on how it has developed after working with the school system and knowing many, many families in the district is as follows....

Northside Elementary awas originally planned/approved when the Northside neighborhood itself was still largely made up of working-class families with kids (a relatively small, underserved, and diminishing segment of the population of CH). A brand new, high-tech school in a neighborhood that could use some love...

Over the course of the time/red tape of getting the school actually built and ready for occupancy;the Northside neighborhood changed relatively quickly and relatively dramatically from a largely working-class neighborhood to a mostly UNC-undergrad-from-wealthy-families neighborhood. Thus...there were far less families with kids in the actual area immediately around Northside Elementary as there were before.


Thus..the district; which largely attracts people not only because of the "high-performance" but also because of it's relatively small size which generally allowes for more of the "neighborhood schools" vibe....had to fill Northside Elem by pulling from neighborhoods far removed from that school and relatively close to other schools.

Neighborhoods as far north as Homestead Rd and as far south as Morgan Creek and many meandering points in between....were now assigned to Northside when they were much closer to other schools (specifically Seawell, Glenwood, and Scroggs in this instance)....and this upset a lot of parents.

Said upset parents with the resources/connections to do so found ways to get their kids into other schools in the district; while those without such means didn't.

All a recipe for the "redheaded stepchild" syndrome for Northside Elementary.

I wouldn't be surprised if they make it a magnet school before too long to try and combat this incredibly ironic syndrome.

[usafstud]

Thanks for the historical info, it explains a lot. I am just not sure if and can the academy test scores improve. I understand it is only one data point, but it is a data set.

Originally Posted by TarHeelNick

Neighborhoods as far north as Homestead Rd and as far south as Morgan Creek and many meandering points in between....were now assigned to Northside when they were much closer to other schools (specifically Seawell, Glenwood, and Scroggs in this instance)....and this upset a lot of parents.

Said upset parents with the resources/connections to do so found ways to get their kids into other schools in the district; while those without such means didn't.

All a recipe for the "redheaded stepchild" syndrome for Northside Elementary.

I wouldn't be surprised if they make it a magnet school before too long to try and combat this incredibly ironic syndrome.

How would they get their kids into another school in the district they are not zoned for?