Charlotte-Meck Schools Allow Wealthy (White) Parents To Have Their Way...District Remains Racially Segregated

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CMS posts options for shifting students


New proposals that would shuffle students in popular magnets and some affluent close-in neighborhoods turned up the volume Wednesday on a student-assignment controversy that already has hundreds of families up in arms.

A complex set of plans to relieve crowding at Eastover Elementary went online after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools offices closed at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Parents in the Dilworth neighborhood began organizing within the hour.

Those plans involve moving some Eastover students into the high-poverty First Ward Elementary and/or swapping magnet and neighborhood-school buildings.

Fierce debate over sending students from Myers Park to East Mecklenburg High has been building for a month, with meetings for and against the move drawing hundreds. The options posted Wednesday include reassigning families who live in the Cotswold Elementary attendance zone, moving students who attend Myers Park's International Baccalaureate magnet program or delaying action.

The school board will discuss the options Tuesday and decide whether to schedule community meetings on the plans.

The elementary and high school options both involve complex projections on how changes would affect crowding, academics, busing and poverty levels. Some board members and candidates say the current board should wait until after the November election, when the new board can review guidelines for student assignment before making explosive changes.

“To tweak boundaries again and impact tons of neighborhoods is not the way to do it,” vice chair Kaye McGarry said Wednesday.

If the board moves ahead, it will have to launch a sped-up review and vote by November to be ready for the 2010-11 school year.

Eastover changes

Eastover Elementary, viewed as one of CMS's most desirable neighborhood schools, has grown by almost 200 students over the last five years. It had 593 enrolled as of the 10th day of school, an increase of 30 over last year, and has set up classrooms in the auditorium.

One CMS option would have Eastover swap buildings with Myers Park Traditional, a magnet in a larger building nearby. However, that would leave the Eastover building overcrowded with magnet students.

Another would move about 110 students from Eastover to First Ward, which will lose a magnet program next year. The overwhelming majority of First Ward students are black and from low-income homes, while Eastover is majority white and low poverty. The change would make little difference in Eastover's demographics, according to CMS projections, but would reduce First Ward's poverty from 82 percent to 67 percent and boost white enrollment from less than 1 percent to 21 percent.

A variation on that option would put the First Ward students, including those moved from Eastover, into Dilworth Elementary, which is now an arts magnet. First Ward would become the arts magnet.

High school plans

Wednesday brought the first formal glimpse of options for Myers Park and East Meck highs. But rumors have been flying since shortly after the unanimous Aug. 11 school board vote to consider shifting students from Myers Park, which has almost 3,000 students, to East Meck, which will drop to about 1,500 after a new high school opens in Mint Hill in August.

After board member Trent Merchant said in a radio interview that moving Cotswold into the East Meck attendance zone would be the logical move, Cotswold residents promptly organized to resist that shift.

Meanwhile, East Meck supporters geared up to argue that losing so much enrollment would remove skilled teachers and shrink academic options for the remaining students. Tuesday night, a group of East Meck backers asked the board to move the Cotswold zone to their school.

The CMS staff plans to put that option on the table, along with three proposals to leave boundaries intact but move some or all of Myers Park's IB magnet students.

Any changes in Myers Park's IB program, which is considered one of the district's most successful magnets and a distinguishing part of the school, are likely to draw objections. Myers Park has 556 IB magnet students drawn from southern and western Mecklenburg County.

Tuesday's board meeting, which is open to the public but will not include public comments, starts at 6 p.m. at the Government Center, 600 E. Fourth St.



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Sources: Charlotte Observer, CMS, C-Span, US Dept of Ed., NY Times, Wikipedia, Youtube, Creepygif.com, Coverbrowser.com, Segregated Schools.com, Google Maps