Manipulating Capacity to Fill Unpopular Schools

Why would the Long Range capacity at Durant Road Elementary be changed from 935 to 772?  Maybe because a brand new school is opening across the street from DRES next year.  Actually the school (E-20) is opening in the modular campus next year, which is located on Spring Forest Road about a block east of East Millbrook Middle School.  Its permanent location across the street from Durant Road Elementary won't be open for a few years.  Somebody has to fill that school and what better way than to have less capacity at Durant Road Elementary?  

I am having an a-ha moment as I type this.  Another nearby elementary school also had some strange things happening with its capacity.  Wildwood Forest's capacity is 793 in the 2010-11 Facility Utilization Report, 644 in the assignment plan and has a current student population of 863.  Interesting. 

In the new controlled choice plan, filling new schools is all done by 'choice'.  Nobody is reassigned to that new school and the new schools will open with only grades K-3.  They keep emphasizing that nobody is assigned to a school--that we all choose the school we want our kids to go to.  But if there isn't any capacity or there is reduced capacity, how much of a choice is there? 

In the Student Assignment document document, they list the capacity for each grade at each school.  You can find the 2011-12 student membership numbers for each school broken down by grade here.

Referring to those documents, you can see that for both Wildwood Forest and Durant Road Elementary schools, there are more students per grade than will be allowed under the new capacity figures in the assignment plan.  They aren't going to kick any students out of those schools, but when newcomers enter the system, there won't be any seats for them at those schools and they will be sent somewhere else.  Somewhere like E-20 or perhaps an under enrolled school that nobody wants to go to. 

It will be very easy for WCPSS to manipulate the capacity numbers at schools in order to funnel kids where they ultimately want them to go.  One of the selling points of this plan is supposed to be that staff will be able to tell very early on which schools are "under chosen" and then do something to help those schools attract families.  First, we don't need a choice plan to tell us which schools are unpopular and will be under chosen.  We've known for years and we've done nothing about them before.  Second, it won't matter if a school is "under chosen"--if it's on your list you could end up there.  Somebody has to go there and with the ability to manipulate capacity numbers at surrounding schools it will be easy to fill all of the schools.

I know that I am being very skeptical here, maybe even a bit paranoid, but after spending more than 6 years following WCPSS issues, I've earned my skepticism. 

Capacity in the Controlled Choice Plan

 Looking over the capacity figures that were part of the Student Assignment Plan document presented to the board 2 weeks ago, I noticed some inconsistencies.  Last year, WCPSS came out with the 2010-11 Facility Utilization Report that listed the capacity for each school. 

Capacity is looked at in two ways:  Long Range School Campus Capacity (LRSCC) and Annual School Campus Capacity (ASCC).  LRSCC is the School Building Capacity plus the optimum number of temporary classrooms.  In other words, the capacity of the brick and mortar building plus the optimum number of trailers for that campus.  Now it could be argued that trailers are not ideal at all, but WCPSS has come up with a way to determine the optimum number for each campus.  You can find this info on page 6 of the Facility Utilization Report that I referenced above.

ASCC is the actual capacity of the school as we are using it today, which can include more than the optimum number of trailers.  In fact, most of our schools have more than the optimum number of trailers and some have less.  ASCC also includes adjustments for programs such as Pre-K and self-contained classrooms.  That part gets a little confusing and is really fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

So what does this all mean in the Controlled Choice Plan?  The plan says that it uses LRSCC for the capacity numbers but the numbers they are using in the plan don't always match up to the 2010-11 Report.  I've asked WCPSS why this is but I haven't heard back from them yet.  Many of the school capacities only differ by less than 50 students but some differences are perplexing.  What is really concerning, however, is that many of our schools are well over the LRSCC yet we are now going to fill schools according to that lower number.

An extreme example is Durant Road Elementary.  The LRSCC in the 2010-11 Report is 935, in the Assignment Plan it is listed as 772, and the actual student population this year is 1030.  Those are some huge differences.  The Kindergarten capacity in the assignment plan is listed as 126 but there are 202 Kindergarteners at Durant Road this year.  That's 76 students who would have to go somewhere else in the new plan.  Where would they go?

This leads me to my first of two big questions regarding capacity in this assignment plan.  Will staff manipulate capacity numbers at certain schools in order to steer students where they want them to go?  Since this is getting a bit long, I'll answer this question in the next post.

Little Known Details of the Controlled Choice Plan

Going through the Controlled Choice plan, I found some interesting details that aren't widely known. 

•  Your choices are determined by your node.  The choices themselves are determined by the distance from the center of your node.  But the proximity of your choices is determined by your specific address.  People within a node can have proximity priority for different schools.
•  Transfer requests can still be made, but only to a school not on your magnet or base school choice lists.  So if all of your neighbors got into School A and your child is the only one going to School B, you cannot apply for a transfer to School A.  If School A was your first choice, you will be placed on the waiting list but you cannot apply for a transfer.
• You can no longer turn down a year round school because of the track.  Track allocations are made after school assignments are given.  If you don't like your track and the school is unable to change it, the only recourse you have is to apply for a transfer.  But remember--you can't apply for a transfer to a school on your original choice list and you won't have transportation if you get a transfer. 

Blue or Green: False Choice

How many people actually looked at the other 7 plans that the Student Assignment Task Force came up with?  I'm guessing not very many.  The task force 'developed' 9 plans and then presented the two front runners to the public for comment.  I found it very convenient that the two plans were: 1) pretty much the same thing we have now and 2) a slightly modified version of the Alves plan.  What were the other ideas and could they really find nothing better than these 2?

I looked at the other seven proposals and all I could do was shake my head.  My favorite was the Teal Plan, which was basically a big flip of the bird to neighborhood school supporters.  The Teal Plan called for every student to attend the absolute closest school, no matter how overcrowded or under enrolled some schools ended up.  The most asinine part of this plan was that magnets and year round schools were filled only with proximate students.  Nobody could apply to these schools.  We would still fund magnet programs but nobody would be able to apply to them.  We would still have year round schools, but nobody could apply.  Nor could the students assigned to the year round schools apply to a traditional option.

I still shake my head when I think about this 'plan'.  The recurring question in my mind is "We paid for the task force to come up with THIS?!?"  Truly, this is the best that this task force could come up with?  And then they presented the blue and green plans to us as the two most feasible options?  It sure seems to me that they had the Alves plan in mind all along and needed a way to shove it down our throats under the guise of having done due diligence.