Learning from the experience of others

I have been watching with interest how Wake County fares with its school assignment plans, in light of Judge Manning's ruling earlier this year. Their experience may shed some light on what Orange County can expect next year when it merges Central and Hillsborough Elementary schools under a year-round school calendar.

Today is the first day of school for children in Wake County's year-round schools and far fewer parents have chosen the year-round option than the school system expected.

In a Raleigh News & Observer article titled, "New year-rounds may get fewer pupils," T. Keung Hui writes, "the results haven't come close to what the school district projected. Instead of welcoming 3,000 more students to the converted elementary schools this year, only 500 more students are expected to attend."

In essence, parents are voting with their feet by either abandoning their neighborhood school because it was converted to a year-round schedule they didn't want or by being "scared away from moving to the area."

The turmoil caused by the Wake County plan goes beyond just parents and children. Hui writes, "when enrollment fell even further than expected, some teachers were transferred out of year-round schools. In other cases, year-round schools have moved teachers to other grades or between tracks, which all have their own schedules and days off. 'It's been very difficult on my teachers and staff because I've had to move teachers around at the last minute,' said Williams, the Knightdale Elementary principal."

In a hint that the Orange County Board of Education's "Big Plan" will likely be a huge waste of time, Wake County's zoned year-round schools are resulting in an "undesirable shift in the socioeconomic balance of our schools." As Hui points out in her article, the problem is that "most of the students who left the year-round schools are from low-income families."

Is there any reason to believe that low-income families in Orange County are any more enamored with the year-round schedule than in Wake County?