Over the past few weeks I have been involved in a running debate of the proposed merger on a local politics blog named Squeeze the Pulp.
One of the people debating me on the issue is Brad Davis who recently sent a Letter to the Editor of The News of Orange County in support of merging CES and HES. Throughout his arguments, Mr. Davis keeps repeating that:
"55% of children at HES come from Central and Efland-Cheeks."
In reality, the number is more like 57%. According to the OCS data presented to the BOE in February, 31.1% of HES students are zoned to Efland-Cheeks and 25.7% are zoned to CES.
As a CES parent, Mr. Davis believes that parents from the ECES and CES zones who enroll their children at HES are "largely responsible for the situation" facing those two schools and that such an exodus should have been prevented by the Board of Education.
However, he is generous enough to suggest a compromise under the guise of "school choice." He suggests a 15% cap on HES enrollment from any one school zone - in essence forcing more than half the HES students zoned to Efland-Cheeks and over 40% of those zoned to CES back to their neighborhood school, while at the same time virtually guaranteeing admission to anyone zoned to New Hope (5.4%), Pathways (8.8%) or Grady Brown (10.5%).
While I am very opinionated, I am also comfortable admitting when I don't know something. This is one of those cases.
My family is zoned to New Hope Elementary, so I don't know first-hand what drives so many parents from the ECES and CES zones to seek out alternatives to their neighborhood schools.
I would love to hear from parents with first-hand knowledge and can explain why HES is so popular in these neighborhoods. With the Board of Education's next full meeting scheduled for Efland on Monday, I encourage as many local parents as possible to signup to make public comments and share your experiences with the Board.
If you are unable to speak about this at the Board meeting, feel free to leave your comments here or join the discussion on STP.
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3 comments:
I am a parent of 3 children and we are zoned for Efland Cheeks. My oldest son will start kindergarten in 2009. Before this merger stuff began, we were without a doubt going to do our best to get him into HES. The reasons are simple - better instruction, better scores, better overall environment. We also like the year-round schedule. However, if CES and HES merge, our reasons for moving our son out of Efland Cheeks are gone. If this happens, we will probably seek out a private school.
I have to respond to the first comment. Both my children attended ECE and came out fine. If ECE and CES had the same parent involvement that HES does then I think that things would be vastly different at both schools. Children who attend ECE are not heading to Middle School behind the curve or under-educated. To assume that ECE and CES are failing all students is to not completely understand the process of AYP. I would love to know what is meant by "Better enviornment" The teachers at ECE deserve some respect, hell EVERY teacher who puts up with all they do on a daily basis deserves our respect. How about we channel all this energy into improving ECE and CES instead of nit-picking this subject to death!!
I have a child at ECE and in general we have found their staff to be excellent. However, w/ each failing AYP many teachers must focus their efforts on those children who have failed/are failing. There are only a limited number of hours in a school day, so children who are high scoring do not necessarily receive a commiserate amount of attention or enrichment. Also, ECE has scored lower than many other schools in the area of math and this is worrisome to us. For now we are sticking it out and supplementing his education ourselves. However, I can see why many parents would want to make the move to HES.
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