The opening of four new schools in western Wake County is bringing many parents to the school board and a petition — largely from the fast-growing Apex area, where families don’t want to be moved to different schools.
The school board will hold a public hearing during its 5:30 p.m. meeting Tuesday. The hearing is the last district-organized feedback opportunity ahead of a Nov. 26 school board vote on a final enrollment plan.
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Families from different Apex neighborhoods have said they’re frustrated because their children have already been reassigned once before or because their children don't want to attend their new school. They’re also concerned about their elementary and middle school children ending up on different calendars.
The school system hasn’t changed too much of its plan since first proposing it in September, especially when it comes to neighborhoods being moved into the new schools that will need children to fill them.
A common concern among parents is having to change from a traditional to year-round calendar, while they are simultaneously zoned for a traditional-calendar middle school — setting up a mismatch of their children’s schedules.
“If we don’t have this option to stay, my children will never be on the same calendar,” Amanda Colon, whose children are proposed to move from Apex Friendship Elementary to the new Pleasant Plains Elementary, told WRAL News. “It will disrupt our family big time.”
School board members have said they don’t like that the plan would force calendar changes and mismatches on families, and the district has offered some calendar application schools in some cases.
One mom, Jen O’Brien, told the board she was concerned about the impact of having her children on different calendars on her family’s schedule and budget. She estimated her family could spend $4,200 more on childcare, if the plan passes.
Distance is also a concern for some parents.
Casey O’Leary, who lives in Colon’s neighborhood, noted the new school is six miles away, instead of two miles. Her daughter has autism and several medical conditions, and she’s nervous about switching her care over to new staff.
“Right now, the ambulance is very close to her,” O’Leary told WRAL News. “To now having to go over a major highway and all of this an extra six miles up the street to an emergency — that’s a big deal to me.”
O’Leary could apply for a hardship transfer to keep her daughter at her current school, but those transfers aren’t guaranteed.
The school system is recommending all of the new elementary schools — Rex Road, Pleasant Plains and Bowling Road — be “multi-track year-round,” which means they’ll have up to four different cohorts of students rotating in and out of the school from early July through early June. It’s a way to increase the capacity of a school without increasing the size of the building, because some portion of students will always be “tracked out” and not in school.
System officials are recommending multi-track year-round because of the high-growth in the area. If the schools can accommodate more students, then the district can go longer without having to build a new school or reassign students out of overcrowded schools.
That’s the goal, according to Susan Pullium, district senior director of the student assignment office.
The district also doesn’t have any new elementary schools planned for Apex in its seven-year plan. It owns undeveloped property in the area, near the county line, but doesn’t have a timeline for using it. That means families moving into developments closer to the Chatham County line will have farther commutes to school and assignment areas can at times appear like long rectangles with the school on the eastern border.
Pullium also noted that families don’t always agree on what the calendar should be for new schools and many have preferred different options.
Beyond calendar mismatches, Pullium said she understands people don’t like the instability of school changes, especially when families have been reassigned multiple times.
“Changing schools is the least preferred option, yet we have four new schools… so that’s sort of an inevitably,” Pullium said. “If you’re living in a high-growth area the frequency with which your neighborhoods are reassigned can be frustrating.”
Kaitlyn Treder, who has spearheaded a petition to keep Ashley Downs and Pearson Farms neighborhoods at Olive Chapel Elementary, said she knows her community is growing fast. Her children and neighbors can walk to the school right now. Under the district’s assignment plan, her children could stay but neighboring children could have to move to Baucom Elementary three miles away and on a different academic calendar, a change that she says will disrupt their sense of community.
“They’re not going to be able to have those relationships,” Treder told WRAL News.
District officials told WRAL News they did not consider Treder’s neighborhood to be in walking distance, because children must walk along Olive Chapel Road without a buffer between the sidewalk and the road, even though the walk is less than a mile. Treder has argued the walk is safe and that she and her husband walk their children and have offered to walk neighbors’ children to the school everyday.
“Our community is huge, but it’s clear they don’t know each community, what those lines on the map actually mean,” Treder said.