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With regard to the busing situation in Charlotte, as others have said it has nothing to do with quotas and racial diversity. It's related to the choice zones. Many people choose to "lottery" their children into other elementary schools outside their choice zone, rather than sending their kids to the home school (which, yes, you sometimes have to pass other elementary schools to get to just because of the way the attendance areas are drawn). So in my old neighborhood, kids attended 8 different elementary schools - strictly by parental choice. My daughter was the only one in the (small) neighborhood who went to the home school.
In Tega Cay, of course, we're facing the same effect with kids being bused to Riverview during the GHES enrollment freeze, but the 2 new Fort Mill elementary schools opening next year should alleviate some of the overcrowding.
This is pretty much just repeating what others have said but I think it is worth repeating because some people just don't get "it".
1. You can't really compare NC schools to SC schools. You need to compare district to district or even school to school. Both states are consistantly rated low in schools in general but both states also have some of the best school districts in the country.
2. If you are going to compare FMS to CMS, then Fort Mill School District wins, hands down by a mile BUT there are a handful of very good schools within CMS. YOU have to do the research.
3. South Carolina in recent years has totally revamped its education standards and I could cite about a dozen resources that consider it in the top five or ten strictest/toughest state standards. I am not going to do your research for you but do a google search and you will find exactly what I found about a year ago. Yes SC has some of the worst schools in the country but it also has some of the BEST. Fort Mill has been nationally ranked as one of the best schools districts in the COUNTRY, not just within the state. SC's education department's goal is to be in the top 50 percentile by 2010 and I think that it can reach it. If the report card says it is a good school, you can be sure that it is a good school because of the state standards. You can't say the same for many other states though.
4. I have a very good friend that was a teacher at a S. Charlotte school who transferred to Fort Mill and then moved to Fort Mill once she taught in the district and saw the difference (she has young kids). That speaks volumes for me, not about where she wants to work but where a teacher wants to put her own kids.
I have a close relative that has taught in high school in Union County and Fort Mill schools. Fort Mill schools win, hands down. I'll take the observations of a teacher anyday. We all recently moved here, so we have no built-in bias.
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