CMS Board Approves Major School Reassignment Plan

CHARLOTTE, NC -- In the early morning hours and after a nearly seven-hour meeting, Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board members voted Thursday in favor of a controversial school reassignment plan that has left parents and the community divided.

The proposal, which stands to affect thousands of CMS students, would includes redrawing school boundaries, reopening shuttered facilities and realigning feeder school patterns.

After a month of public forums and community input, education officials approved the proposal, however, African-American school board members said aspects of it placed a greater burden on minority and working-class families, The Charlotte Observer reported.

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“As our community changes and grows, our public schools need to change and grow too. This plan will advance our district by improving socioeconomic diversity, addressing schools that are over capacity or underutilized and expanding the reach of magnet programs,” CMS Superintendent Ann Clark said Thursday in a statement.

The full CMS proposal on the changes that would take effect at the start of the 2018 school year can be found here.

According to CMS, the new strategy will improve socioeconomic diversity in 21 of the 75 schools that will be affected by the change, and will improve proximity for students at 14 schools. The plan will also increase the number of magnet school seats by 62 percent, bringing the total district number to 4,270 seats for the 2018-2019 school year.

YOUR TURN: What do you think about the proposed boundary changes? Tell us what you think in the comment section.

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