School board members differ on redistricting
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on July 12, 2017 3:59 PM
The Wayne County Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to begin the process of redistricting parts of the school system.
Now, members of the board and district administrative staff are trying to figure out exactly how to do that.
David Lewis, assistant superintendent for accountability/information technology, said that redistricting is a very complex process which the school system will have to research in-depth.
"We're so early in the process, to be honest I'm not sure what the first step is," he said. "You can count on us reaching out to other districts, seeing how it's been done there in order to determine the most fair way to do it."
Several board members offered their views on what the board's priorities should be in the early going.
District 2 Rep. Len Henderson said that the board needs to set realistic goals for how it is going to change district lines, and begin working on them as soon as possible. He said he hopes to discuss redistricting at the board's June 25 work session, although such meetings typically cover a wide range of topics.
One option is to call a special meeting specifically to discuss redistricting. District 4 Rep. Jennifer Strickland said that such a meeting should have been called "10 years ago," and has asked board Chairman Arnold Flowers to call a special meeting several times.
Flowers said that he is willing to call a meeting, but is hesitant to do so until the board has more information to discuss.
"This needs to be a fair and methodical process," he said. "We need to have the preparatory data and information. If you're going to, for lack of a better word, demand a meeting, you need to have something to meet about and know you're getting something done."
Flowers also said he works "at the pleasure of the board" and wants to make sure the rest of the board is in support of a special meeting before calling one. At multiple board meetings and special sessions over the last month, the other board members have all individually expressed support for such a meeting.
Mrs. Strickland said that, in addition to a meeting between the board, one of the first steps must be to engage the public.
"We have to schedule meetings with the public in every district, to find out what they would prefer," she said. "We need to know if they would prefer us to add on to existing buildings, and we need to have meetings both during the day and in the evening."
Sitting down with the county planning department is vital, Mrs. Strickland said. In order to effectively redistrict, the school system has to plot where population growth is expected to happen and plan accordingly.
District 6 Rep. Richard Pridgen agreed. He said that a prior disconnect between county planners and the school board is partially to blame for substantial overcrowding at Tommy's Road Elementary.
"I joined the board in 2002, and we went a long time without knowing where [the county] was going to build," he said. "We have a better idea now where they're going to build and where the growth is going to be."
Flowers suggested that redistricting could be an iterative process, whereby district lines are tweaked every year similar to how Wake County operates. Pridgen disagreed, saying that Wayne County cannot match the pace of Wake County's expansion.
"We can't build five or six new schools every year like Wake County does," he said. "Whatever we do needs to be able to last for 10 years at least."
At-Large Rep. Raymond Smith Jr. said that the path to fighting overcrowding begins with the district honoring its own policies. The board voted earlier this year to stop all future transfers to over-capacity schools, which was already the policy as-written. In practice, school administrative staff had allowed parents to move their children even when the schools hit capacity.
However, even revoking all transfers would still leave schools like Tommy's Road hundreds of students over capacity.
Smith said that redistricting should be used as a tool to achieve socio-economic parity between districts.
"The citizens of Wayne County deserve a school board that is cognizant of the need for redistricting as an economic issue, not just something that is convenient for a few people," he said.
District 1 Rep. Chris West and District 3 Rep. Patricia Burden could not be reached for comment.