Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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I saw some stats this past wkend about who exactly voted for them. As a % of voters from the county, it was a very low number of ppl who voted - period. Not everyone was able to vote depending on your district, I believe. So I think they said that only 11% of voters turned out and the new members got around 60% of those votes and there was something in there about it being a lot from the Cary area - sorry, I'm not recalling what I all I read.
Anyhow, that can't be translated into saying the voters made their opinion clear as it's a small sampling. Conversely, a larger # of parents who completed the recent survey said they were happy with their child's school. Again, not everyone was represented here.
I also don't get the warm and fuzzies from the new folks. Time will tell. I feel we will have more of the haves and have not's with respect to quality of schools. I wonder where will the $$ come from to help the newly formed struggling schools.....
I saw some stats this past wkend about who exactly voted for them. As a % of voters from the county, it was a very low number of ppl who voted - period. Not everyone was able to vote depending on your district, I believe. So I think they said that only 11% of voters turned out and the new members got around 60% of those votes and there was something in there about it being a lot from the Cary area - sorry, I'm not recalling what I all I read.
Anyhow, that can't be translated into saying the voters made their opinion clear as it's a small sampling. .
It is just hard to follow all this.. Doesn't each district have an voted in
representative?? Doesn't each adult in each district have a chance to vote for
that board member spot?? Then the board votes on decisions.
Kellt 237-Don't want to go off topic so will say that this info is on a couple of other threads & ppl who are in the know share what we have, what got us here and poss solutions.
But that line of reasonsoing calls into question any election as 100% of turnout never happens, even in presidential years. I can't say I love the way things are going (though I did not love the way they were prior either) but with the run-off election, there was even a second chance for those against this to mobilize and try to stop it and they were not sucessfull.
At any rate, back to the post, all everyone around here can do is deal with the consequencens for now and I would still not move somewhere specifically for the school the area goes to for a while. Things are too unsettled. MLS should take the school assignments off the listings even.
Last edited by Sherifftruman; 03-16-2010 at 08:13 AM..
SheriffT - it's not about who didn't turn out, it's who was allowed (or not) to vote based on the structure of the voting system. You and feel the same about the school system. This info is in more detail on other threads.
We can't hijack this thread any longer or will be deleted
We can't hijack this thread any longer or will be deleted
Not deleted -- just banished to a separate thread!
This is an important topic and well worth discussing, but I do ask that everyone please try to stay on-topic in threads that ask specific questions and keep comments such as these in a more general thread.
In the above piece, Russell Capps is quoted as saying (about the superintendent) we need a business leader to lead the WCPSS as it is the biggest business here, millions and millions of $$ (he said). To me this is sad that one of the key players who worked to place conservative (Republican) board members on the school board doesn't grasp that it's no in the millions its a $1.2 Billion budget! newsobserver.com |WakePol
When you read more on Russell Capps it seems he was instrumental in getting the school bond amount halved in 1998, in 1999 his group helped defeat the $650M school bond. This is the wake blog from the N&O .
Now I'm all for cutting waste, and unnecessary taxes but I think his group has gone too far. They stopped the school system from growing and building more new school by pressuring the system to 1.reduce spending; then they 2. defeated the bonds issue which took away funds needed to build new schools.
Then they backed the new board members to get them in front of the electorate as candidates of change - after they compromised the current superintendent and boards expansion plans. Now they propose neighborhood schools (which much of wake co has anyhow except in magnet neighborhoods & where parents choose yr rd) and want to end mandatory yr rd - which we had to go to as we didn't have enough schools to put new residents in why - see 1 & 2 above.
So where do we end up? We will need new schools now...but where will the money come from? And what is the real reason they wanted to change our schools? The minority kids who were bussed from Poole Rd to Leesville will need a neighborhood schools...where will they go? If the white kids & and or any race affluent kids get to stay in magnets in a mostly minority neighborhood...where will the kids go from the neighborhood the school is in, if they are currently bussed to North Raleigh and Cary?
I truly don't think they can achieve what they say they can without more funds needed and more schools. If Del Burns had to resort to mandatory yr rd schools to fit all kids in, what will they do differently - they'd better pull out the wall -stetchers 'cos they're gonna have to make the schools bigger!
The new school board has said that they were not interested in eliminating the magnet programs that exist in many schools ITB. Perhaps they are going to use the choice of going to a magnet as a mechanism to mitigate any negative impact on particular schools? That said, I don't think that's going to be their concern. I just don't get warm fuzzies from them in that regard.
I think they are going to be a disaster. It's my gut feeling. Let's hope that either they realize it or that the voters do in short order.
Has the new school board committed to keeping the magnets that are currently ITB IN ITB? The report I heard was a little ambiguous. The report I heard talked about keeping the current magnet programs, but it did not specifically say if those magnets would stay there. This report was also talking about extending some magnets to suburban areas.
Some magnet programs cost more money to run. (You need foreign language teachers, busing, etc for some.) Thus with the budget crisis not seeming to go away I wonder where they are getting the money to add new magnets without moving old ones? Savings from busing? But some schools will loose Title 1 dollars when their f & r lunch kids drop below the threshold.
And to speak to other posters, the reason why I think the new policies will adversely impact the real estate values is because Wake Co. will soon have a system much like Durham's. We have some great schools and some dismal schools. Real Estate in Durham tends to be a bit cheaper because in part of the hit and miss of the school systems here. Keep in mind as more people move there, redistricting is going to happen. You might have a great assignment now. But with growth you might get redistricted to a dismay school. 3 years ago ALL the Raleigh realtors told me there are no bad schools in Raleigh, so reassignment is not that big of a deal. And if you think 3 years ago Raleigh had "bad schools and hard to sell neighbors", just call a Durham realtor to have them explain the difference in selling certain neighborhoods here.
Companies like to move to areas where the schools are stable. Right now WCPSS does not have a very stable feel to it. (Much like DPS did not have a stable feel back in our days of our entertaining school board.) That makes folks nervous and businesses even more nervous... especially when there is so much national attention being given to this.
Like they say it takes years to build a good reputation and minutes to destroy one. I don't want to see WCPSS fail. It not only will have a ripple negative effect to Durham and other areas of the Triangle, but kids and families are hurt in the process. But it's kind of hard to see a long term happy ending from what I'm seeing in the news these days. Sure, some individual families might have a "happy ending" for their kids but that doesn't mean the city or school district will. Or that your grandchildren will have a happy ending. For me education reform is not just about my kids or even just about my district's or states kids today. It's about all future generations too. Doesn't seem like there is much long range, inclusive thought going into the new policies from WCPSS.
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