About 1,600 Wake County students will be assigned to new schools in the coming school year after the county school board approved an annual reassignment plan intended to manage the growing district’s headcount.
The Wake County Board of Education approved, without opposition, its student assignment plan for the 2024-25 school year, hours after the system staff presented its final iteration of the plan during an afternoon work session. The final plan made few changes from pervious drafts.
Wake parents can look up their school assignment for next year using the school system’s website. Families who are affected will receive individual messages early next week from the school system about what they can do if they want to stay in their current schools. Eligible families can apply to stay between Nov. 29 and Dec. 13.
The plan will affect 1,572 students, less than 1% of the system’s 160,000 students. About three-quarters of them will be able to apply to stay at their current school. System officials originally said the reassignment plan would have affected a similar percentage of students as previous plans have, about 2% to 3% of students.
"It is not an easy decision for us to move families at all and that’s not what we want," board member Cheryl Caulfield said. But because of transportation and crowding issues, the change is best for the system in the long run, she said.
It's difficult to balance families' wishes with state class size requirements, booming growth in certain areas and bus driver shortages, board Vice Chairman Chris Heagarty said.
Some board members cautioned parents against worrying that their child will be moved to a worse school.
Chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said her children were reassigned to a school a few years ago that people warned was worse but she's found the school to be a good experience.
"Change is hard and change is scary, but you will find high-quality teachers and folks who will love on your kids, just like I had when my kids had to move schools," Mahaffey said.
No parents spoke against the proposal during the meeting Tuesday, though they'd flooded several meetings already this fall. At the last public hearing, many said they believed school system officials had made up their minds already.
The plan is expected to move students from 21 schools into new schools, largely to relieve overcrowding and reduce busing routes during a bus driver shortage. It will also eliminate many options for families assigned to year-round schools to apply for their children to attend traditional calendar schools. The move is in part designed to reduce busing routes for those calendar-transfer students.
The assignment plan mostly moves students from schools across Wake County to schools closer to them. In some cases, neighborhoods were assigned farther away years ago, in part to increase economic diversity in schools. Most changes have drawn little criticism, and some have been welcomed by people wanting shorter school commute times.
However, hundreds of families have protested a few parts of the reassignment plan, including many in three fast-growing areas: Morrisville, Garner and Holly Springs. For many of the families, they’ll be reassigned to elementary schools farther away from their current schools. Families there have said they like their current school and don't want to disrupt their children's education.
In Morrisville and Holly Springs, many families won’t be eligible to apply for a transfer to stay at their current school next year. Some of them, in the first two drafts, would have been forced to switch calendars, from a year-round school year to a traditional school year in Morrisville and from a traditional to a year-round in Holly Springs.
The final draft presented Tuesday removed the calendar switch for many families in Morrisville. The board approved that change.
System officials decided to recommend a year-round school calendar, versus a traditional fall to spring calendar, for Pleasant Grove Elementary School. That school, under the approved assignment plan, will lose most of its student body to other schools and receive hundreds of students from schools that are currently year-round. The school is currently on a traditional calendar.
An informal survey of families who will be moved to Pleasant Grove Elementary found that 137 families (57%) preferred the year-round calendar, compared with 98 families (41%) preferred a traditional calendar.
Earlier this fall, school board members said they wanted to see a solution for families that would have allowed them to stay on the same school year calendar. They wanted to prevent, for example, parents of an elementary school student and a middle school student from having to be on a traditional elementary school calendar but a year-round middle school calendar.
On Tuesday, Heagarty said he was concerned that some Morrisville students could be moved to a new elementary school, start middle school and be moved to a new middle school once Parkside Middle opens up in 2026.
That’s likely to be very few students, system officials said.
The school system can form a plan for 2026 that would avoid reassigning those students again, said Glenn Carrozza, assistant superintendent of school choice, planning and assignment. It would be easier to accommodate for those students once the school system knows how many would end up being affected when the middle school gets closer to opening, he said.
The school system didn’t propose any changes from the first draft assignment plan released in September to the second draft released in October. Since October, school system officials have solicited more online comments, held additional information sessions and held a public hearing.
The school system weighed some other solutions before drafting its plan earlier this fall, said Susan Pullium, the district's assignment director. But some neighborhoods were left alone after officials decided they were too far away to from where the system wanted to move students, she said.
Most families who don’t want to move to a new school can apply for a stability transfer to stay at their current school, without busing, from Nov. 29 through Dec. 13. All applications submitted during that time frame will be approved.
Some younger students won’t be eligible.
More information on transfers can be found on the school system’s website.
The biggest moves for next year are being made to fill the new Woods Creek Elementary in Holly Springs. The plan will make Woods Creek a multi-track, year-round calendar school for 924 students. Multi-track schools have multiple groups of students attending the same school at different times of the year. How many tracks the school would have would depend on enrollment projections closer to opening.
The plan moves students out of traditional-calendar Apex and Oakview elementary schools and multi-track calendar Holly Springs Elementary. All three are over capacity.
A fourth school — multi-track calendar Oak Grove Elementary — will also receive students from Holly Springs Elementary as a part of the move. Oak Grove, in Raleigh, is well under capacity. Without moving students into Oak Grove or Woods Creek, Holly Springs Elementary is projected to have 34% more students than it was built for in two years. The school will be at 91% capacity in two years.
Under the approved plan, families at 22 year-round schools will no longer have the option to apply for their children to attend a traditional-calendar school. Families at 12 schools will have their options reduced.
Families with children already attending a traditional-calendar school via transfer can apply for a stability transfer to stay at that school. Families at year-round schools can still apply for their children to attend a traditional-calendar school under a hardship transfer, as well. But in both cases, the students won't be eligible any longer for busing to the school.