Differing opinions of districts dominate session
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on September 6, 2017 5:50 AM
Differing opinions on diversity, neighborhood schools and school choice dominated a Wayne County Board of Education work session Tuesday, as members of the board shared their thoughts on what redistricting should accomplish for Wayne County Public Schools.
Beginning the discussion, board member Raymond Smith Jr. said that using proximity -- the idea that students should go to school close to where they live -- as a major determining factor would rule out school choice completely.
"To me that's a dichotomy, they're opposites," he said. "How can we look at proximity and then turn around and say school choice in the same breath? School choice completely disregards proximity."
Smith went on to say that assigning students based on proximity would keep the district from encouraging socio-economic diversity, as many neighborhoods are inherently based around income groups. Using proximity as the main or only assignment tool would not be a viable way to go, he said.
Board member Jennifer Strickland was in near-complete disagreement with Smith, saying that focusing on creating neighborhood schools should be the board's first priority. Doing so would build school pride, she said, and would not necessarily preclude creating diverse schools.
"This is a more recent problem since I got out of school in '93, because when my cousins all graduated from Goldsboro High, it was racially and economically diverse there, and they were all in the neighborhood" she said. "So I say we just pay more attention to how the neighborhoods are laid out and don't draw some out just because we think they'd rather go to Eastern Wayne."
Smith said that proximity and diversity do not mix that cleanly.
"We still have neighborhoods that are based economically," Smith said. "If you are saying that the only concern you have is proximity, then obviously diversity is not a concern. We can't have just proximity as our issue and disregard diversity, or just diversity as our issue and disregard proximity."
Chairman Arnold Flowers, who had expressed his support for neighborhood schools, took issue with that statement. He said he was committed to diversity, and pointed to the open transfer policy used in years past as the reason why some county schools have become so homogenous.
Flowers said that using race as a determining factor in assignments would be wrong, but did acknowledge the tension between creating socio-economic diversity and keeping kids close to home.
"As far as socio-economics, I believe in, as I stated earlier, community schools. Some of our communities, obviously that community is not going to have the same economic ability as one somewhere else in the county," he said. "That one is difficult."
During the diversity discussion, Flowers also said that he is not in favor of special schools like Wayne School of Engineering and Wayne Early Middle College High School because they create "elitist children" and disenfranchise those who do not get in.
"I feel like when we set basically special school, magnet schools, like the school of engineering, we create an environment where we have elitist children that are able to go that school. They are pulled out of the general population," he said.
One goal that the board agreed on was making efficient use of the space the district has. With General Assembly-mandated class size reductions looming on the horizon, tackling over- and under-crowding has become a central issue in the redistricting process. Board member Len Henderson said that structural updates to schools should be part of the efficiency conversation.
"For example, Mount Olive Middle School, which needs to be replaced, to me that's an efficiency issue," he said. "When we're talking about efficiency, not only are we looking at classroom space, but we also need to be looking at the conditions and structures of our facilities."
The board also discussed the idea of school choice -- how much latitude to give parents in choosing their child's school. Members of the board were generally in favor of allowing some kind of flexibility to parents, but differed on how and why to do it.
Strickland said that doing away with all choice would be detrimental to those with extenuating circumstances which require them to go to another school, such as health concerns or transportation problems. Smith said that, if the board wanted to emphasize school choice, it had to be available to everyone.
"Choice is a relative term in this context, because choice has everything to do with individual mobility," he said. "With our former open door policy, it says in big red bold letters at the bottom of the form approving the transfer that the parent is responsible for their own transportation. Well, if your mama doesn't have a car, where's your choice?"
David Lewis, assistant superintendent for accountability/information technology, said school officials will use the board members' opinions as a starting point for crafting policy. Board members will further discuss specifics at two committee meetings scheduled for Wednesday, one for the policy committee and another for the student reassignment committee.