Reassignment Countdown

Like many of you, I am anxiously awaiting the release of the reassignment plan. Unlike many of you, this is the first year that I've had to worry about it affecting my children directly. This is our first year at our base school, having been at a magnet the previous 4 years. So here I am with that same feeling of dread that so many of you across the county are feeling right now. Except now I have the added guilt of having taken my children out of their protected status and throwing them into this mess.


I've been thinking a lot lately about the desire for stability and what lengths parents will go to achieve it. Private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, and the magnet schools. A good friend of mine said something last year that really struck me. I asked if she had seen that some nodes near her had been reassigned to a year round school and her response was "Well, that's why we were smart enough to go to a magnet school".

I have two big problems with this statement. First, what about all the people who applied for magnet schools but were denied? We were LUCKY enough to get into the magnet system. What about people who would like to go to a magnet but can't make it work with their family's schedule? After school care is a different issue when you don't live or work anywhere near the school. A few magnet schools have regular 'neighborhood' buses, but most offer express buses or no bus at all and that makes it more difficult to arrange child care.

Second, my only reason for applying to a magnet school was because I wanted the special program (in my case, daily Spanish instruction) that only a magnet could provide. After hearing my friend's comment, I started to pay more attention to people when they talked about the magnet they were in and why they chose to attend a magnet. Many people attend a magnet mainly to escape reassignment or to escape their assigned base school for whatever reason. The special programs are secondary to them and that frustrates me.

I don't fault them for seeking a better situation for their children, but I am frustrated that at least some of them got chosen in the 'lottery' instead of somebody who really wanted the magnet programs. Programs that WCPSS is not willing to fund for everybody. If WCPSS is going to hold special academic programs hostage in the magnet schools then families who actually want those programs should be able to get them. Of course there is no answer to this because nobody is going to admit at application time that they are just there for the stability and not the program. But it still makes me angry that withholding academic programs is used as a weapon against families in Wake County.

Only 4.5 more hours until the assignment plan is released. Some of us will be cautiously relieved and some of us will be angry and frustrated. I know that whichever side I fall on I'll be hoping for the best for all of you. Good luck everybody.

Some Interesting Reading

I found this article online today and thought it was a fairly balanced look at our school issues even though its a bit dated. Its not too long and its quite readable. Enjoy!

Wake County Schools: A Question of Balance

My Voice

I’m about as liberal as they come. Not Chapel Hill liberal, mind you, but liberal none the less. When we moved to Raleigh in 1998 I was surprised and delighted to learn that Wake County Public Schools had a diversity policy in place. I was proud to live in a community that wanted to prevent inner city schools full of low income, mostly minority students that nobody wanted to teach at or send their children to. Coming from Illinois, I had witnessed this very thing in the Chicago area and it wasn’t pretty. I was concerned about the distance that some of the low income children were bused but I felt that the payoff was worth it.

I always rode a bus to school, so I don’t wax nostalgic for neighborhood schools within walking distance. I know it is not feasible in the quickly growing, sprawling areas of Wake County, but I do think it makes sense for students to attend a school within a reasonable distance of their homes. They should not be traveling 10 miles from home and passing by 4 or 5 other schools to get to their own. Not only is it wasteful in terms of busing, but local schools foster community in a way that distant schools cannot. I also think that special academic opportunities should be available to everybody in Wake County, not just a select few.

I had always believed, as do most people I know, that schools in central and southeast Raleigh would be in dire straits if it weren’t for diversity busing and magnet programs. That poverty in the county was concentrated in central and southeast Raleigh and offering magnet programs was the only way to ensure those schools’ health. I also believed that the rest of the county was fairly well off in comparison and attending magnets in order to get special programs was a necessary and fair sacrifice for us to make. After a few years of driving my children 11 miles each way to and from a magnet school in a neighborhood that I cannot afford to buy a house in, I really started to question the school system’s policies. Who is benefitting from them and who is being hurt? I began looking up facts for myself instead of relying on what WCPSS and the media were reporting. I’ve decided to share what I’ve found with others so we can all be more informed about what is really happening in our school system and to ensure that we all receive equal access to a quality education.