N&O Article: Wake Schoold Still in a Bind! (Raleigh: high schools, moving)
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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Some needs to have the Nads to either go all schools year round or none. Will reduce bussing also since the schools will have the ability to hold more students since 1/4 would be off at any one time. We did it in VA. 4 color codes. One color code off for three weeks, then the next, rotate through. Divide areas by color code so all children in same house are on same color code.
plf86--Converting all the elem & middle schools was the original plan until a very well connected group of parents protested. Once they got their own school off the conversion list they dropped their efforts to fight MYR. The school system went from everybody to 30 schools to the final number of 22 conversions.
I was absolutely for MYR when it was going to be EVERYbody. The system is so inequitable now that I have lost faith in it.
plf86--Converting all the elem & middle schools was the original plan until a very well connected group of parents protested. Once they got their own school off the conversion list they dropped their efforts to fight MYR. The school system went from everybody to 30 schools to the final number of 22 conversions.
I was absolutely for MYR when it was going to be EVERYbody. The system is so inequitable now that I have lost faith in it.
That still isnt equitable. All schools high school included have to convert. Then no one can complain because everyone is treated equal. Just go tradiotional and buy a bunch of trailers. That way when the kids grow up we can just get rid of the trailers and not have a bunch of empty schools.
I wonder if this debate of YR versus traditional school education is truly about education or convenience? At the end of the day it truly matters that our children have the best education possible. Does anyone feel that YR provides a better education over traditional or is it just a way to get more students per school to facilitate the managing of over crowding? As this plays out over the years it will be interesting to see how many parents that went to YR schools will place their kids in those schools or send them traditional schools. Will there be traditional school by then? Time will tell.
But for the foreseeable future this debate will go on and on and on. Just as the children will bounce and bounce and bounce to school after school.
I wonder if this debate of YR versus traditional school education is truly about education or convenience?
Unfortunately, I don't think the core group of complainers are concerned with either the quality of education for their children or their personal convenience. The most pleasant potential source for their gripe seems to be centered on "it is not the way I was educated when I was a child".
Articles I have read regarding educational studies of the Year-Round school versus the agrarian based 9-month school all favor the Year-Round model. Students retain more of what they learn without the prolonged summer break, and less time is needed each year for review of the previous grade's curriculum.
Score: Y-R is better for the educational process.
Multiple postings on this board by parents whose children are in one of the Y-R schools are almost exclusively positive. Postings by parents whose children cannot get accepted by Y-R schools are common here as well. I have yet to read postings by those whose children are in a Y-R progrm and hate it. The only common complaint regarding Y-R schools occurs with participation in inter-scholastic groups at the secondary level, and full Y-R scheduling of all secondary schools could solve this.
Score: Y-R is more convenient.
The difficulty parents are experiencing getting their children enrolled in a Y-R program at a local school, or into a magnet program, is due to federally manadated classroom diversity requirements for education.
Parents of the children who could most benefit from a Y-R or Magnet program are the most distrustfull of these programs and least interested in them.
Parents who have the financial and political where-with-all to block a program which will significantly benefit the children of the lower socio-economic class have successfully done so.
So, is the source of opposition towards Y-R school just the traditional and ignorance driven N-I-M-B-Y (Not In My Back Yard) reaction towards any significant change; or is the underlying cause for this opposition far more sinister, and driven by intolerance and hate? Or is it both?
Not pretty thoughts, but ones that need to be examined.
There is research indicating that YR is better and that it is not. Even WCPSS has admitted that there is not definitive research that YR is better.
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The difficulty parents are experiencing getting their children enrolled in a Y-R program at a local school, or into a magnet program, is due to federally manadated classroom diversity requirements for education.
There is no federally mandated diversity requirement. The diversity policy is self imposed by WCPSS. I don't have a problem with the policy itself, just its implementation.
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Parents who have the financial and political where-with-all to block a program which will significantly benefit the children of the lower socio-economic class have successfully done so.
Some studies have been done showing that low income children are more likely to become latch-key children in the year round system which makes them prime targets for gangs. Also, many lower income families rely on older siblings to watch the younger ones after school. So if a high school sibling is on the traditional calendar but the siblings are on the year round, this is a problem. These families don't have $$ to spend on after school care. I knew a mother at our former school for whom this was a major concern.
Most of the year round schools are located far from the low income families. For example, there are children downtown (Washington Terrace apt complex) who have been reassigned to Leesville ES which is about 13 miles from their home. Many of those families do not own cars so they rely on buses and taxis to get to the school for conferences or to pick up sick kids. If one of those parents from downtown wants to get to Leesville by bus it is 2 hours of traveling time on 2 different buses as well as approx 3 miles of walking to and from the bus stops. A taxi ride is at least $25. Both of these are for ONE way.
I do believe that year round could be beneficial to low income children for 2 main reasons: 1)the school family will be in contact with them on a regular basis rather than not being there for 3 months in the summer. For some of those kids, school is the most consistent thing in their lives. 2) Intersession tutoring could really help them catch up.
But there are two problems in the way: the distance the kids are from the schools and I have found that intersession tutoring is not available at all yr schools. If WCPSS wants to impose this schedule on families, then they need to be consistent with the services offered.
Its just not as simple as saying that this schedule will benefit low income/minority families and that well to do families have screwed it up for them. In theory the schedule could be beneficial, but WCPSS didn't do their homework into the needs of these families. They didn't take into account after school care, distance, or where the money was going to come from for the intersession tutoring. Moving low income kids to year round schools has little to do with actually improving education for them, but it has everything to do with raising the F&R% of year round schools.
Parents of the children who could most benefit from a Y-R or Magnet program are the most distrustfull of these programs and least interested in them.
First of all, while low income nodes are given first priority for entrance into YR schools, they are the LAST ones considered for entrance into magnets. So not only are low income children bused out of magnet schools to make room for higher income children, they have the worst chance of getting into a magnet program through application. If you are low income and want your children to be able to take advantage of the best academic programs in the county you are pretty much SOL.
Second, I absolutely agree that these parents are often the most distrustful of the system. Many of them didn't have good experiences in school themselves and they are distrustful. I don't know how busing them 13 miles away from home helps create trust. IF the kids getting bused were leaving awful schools that were 80% low income it would be one thing, but most of the low income nodes included in the assignment plan are getting moved from a school in the 20s-30s to raise another school's F&R to 15 or 20%.
Most of the schools ITB have F&R percentages lower than the county average. I thought the main reason for the diversity policy was to avoid having kids segregated into schools that were 80-100% low income and minority. So why are we worrying about shipping kids past schools near their homes--Wiley, Lacy, Root, Olds, Hunter, Underwood, which all have F&R less than 30%, to schools that are so far away?
Again, the theory behind it all sounds good, but when I started to dig into the facts behind it all, I really began to question whether the assignment and magnet policies are really doing what they set out to do.
We have magnets located in and serving some of the wealthiest, most elite areas of Raleigh while the rest of us are told that we can't have magnet programs in our areas because we ('wealthier' families) are needed at the magnets.
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