A tip of the "cap"

I wrote earlier about the recommendations the Merger Task Force plans to present to the Orange County Board of Education at its meeting Monday night.

I attended both Task Force meetings and was very pleased to hear so many ideas with which I could agree.

• Like everyone on the Task Force, I also feel that Dennis Whitling's disastrous "Big Plan" should be immediately killed.
  
• Like many on the Task Force, I believe that the creation of a magnet program at CES is a great idea. In fact, I would like to see the concept expanded to include "magnetic" programs at all our elementary schools.
• Like many on the Task Force, I think increased availability of transportation would reduce SES barriers to attending HES, while at the same time increase opportunities for parents to find the school that best fits their child's needs.
• Like many on the Task Force, I feel that increased programs during HES intersessions would benefit all children, and income-based subsidies of these programs would reduce SES barriers to attending HES.
• Like some on the Task Force, I feel that the parents of Orange County should have universal school choice and be allowed to pick the school that best fits their child regardless of where they live.

However, I also found some things the Task Force appeared to support that I could not, and, in fact, I feel will have an effect opposite of what either the Board or the Task Force intends.

Among the three recommendations the Task Force will present on Monday night is one calling for "reexamining the HES application process." During the Task Force meeting, a number of distinctly different ideas were grouped under this heading.

Among the ideas placed under the umbrella of "reexamining the HES application process" was a proposal supported by a number of Task Force members to close HES and force all currently attending students to reapply for admission to the school. Acceptance would be based entirely on a predetermined cap on the number (or percentage) of students that would allowed to return from each school zone.

By this plan, the disproportionate representation of people from the CES and Efland-Cheeks school zones would be prohibited. The suggestion was made to restrict the percentage of students allowed into HES from any one school zone at no more than 20% - even if it resulted in turning away children while seats at HES sat empty for lack of interest from other school zones.

On the surface, this may sound like a a reasonable approach. That is until you put more thought into what would happen in the real world. Unfortunately, the Task Force was not allowed enough time to discuss or consider any one idea before a list was developed using a "pick 3" approach and the meeting was adjourned "on time."

Consider this situation: For the 2008-09 school year (one Task Force member was adamant that the change occur in the coming year), parents of current HES students would be told they must return to their zoned schools unless they reapply for the seats they already occupy at HES, and are selected by the District for a spot at HES. At the same time parents of students currently attending other schools would be told they may apply to fill one of the newly opened HES spots.

When the day to apply arrives, who do you think will apply?

About 99% of applications will come from those already at HES (except for incoming kindergarteners). Of course, this makes perfect sense.

HES children will almost universally want to return to the only school most of them have ever known, and children at other schools will almost universally want to stay at the only school they know. Parents who find the year-round calendar attractive, would have already enrolled their children at HES, and parents who prefer the traditional calendar, or don't want multiple children on different schedules, would seek to stay in their zoned schools.

So, what will be the result of this application process? The pool for selection will look almost exactly like HES does now. Then comes the really interesting part.

Someone has to develop a plan for how to choose which children are permitted to return to HES and which ones will be forced back to CES and Efland Cheeks. According to the data provided to the Board in February, a 20% cap on enrollment from any one school zone would send over 80 HES families back to Efland-Cheeks or CES. Those of us zoned to any other school would almost automatically return to HES because no other school zone makes up more than 17% (Cameron Park), and my zone (New Hope) only accounts for 5%. (So much for the frequent accusation that I only care about my own child.)

But, wait! You can't force those families back to either CES or Efland-Cheeks.

They are both in Title 1 School Improvement. That means that, under the current situation, those parents can immediately opt-out of their zoned schools and return to HES as their school of choice. Even if the Board were to restrict the choice of schools available to opt-out families, and remove HES from the list, the No Child Left Behind law says that you MUST allow a child to stay at their school of choice through the last grade that school offers. That means that the 29 students who's parents chose to opt-out of their zoned school and endure the difficulty of joining HES six weeks into the school year would be exempted from this new plan.

Even if this assignment plan could be worked out, would it have the desired effect of reducing the socioeconomic imbalance between the two schools? No.

According to the District's expert on these matters, Mary Alice Yarborough, the District does not know which individual children in our schools receive Free & Reduced Lunch. Given this, how would you know, by restricting enrollment from the two school zones with the highest poverty levels, that you are not sending some of HES' lowest income students back to the schools with the highest FRL levels?

On the flip side, you will have, in essence, created an "open door" admissions policy for families zoned to schools with much lower levels of Free & Reduced Lunch. If you assign a 20% cap on any one zone, that means at least 240 HES seats will be available to people who are not zoned to either CES or Efland-Cheeks. As of last February, only 161 HES students came those zones.

Effectively, the Board would be telling people, "If you can afford one of the new houses in Churton Grove, we have a seat waiting for your daughter here at Hillsborough Elementary. But, if you can only afford to live in West Hillsborough, we have no room for your son." How likely is it that the first child will improve the SES disparity and the second would not?

Based simply on the demographic data provided to the Task Force by the OCS staff, it is far less likely that any new children drawn from outside the CES and Efland-Cheeks zones will be on Free & Reduced Lunch. In the end, the SES gap between the two schools will not fall, and will in all likelihood widen under any kind of enrollment cap.

The devil is in the details.