CMS Holding Public Hearing Tuesday Night On Widespread School Redistricting Plan

CHARLOTTE, NC -- Parents of students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools affected by a sweeping proposal that would change boundaries for more than half of the district’s schools will have opportunity Tuesday night to tell school board officials what they think.

The school board is holding a public hearing May 9 to gather community input on the school reassignment proposal announced April 25 that would bring changes to 75 of the 138 schools in CMS’ district.The proposal includes redrawing school boundaries, reopening shuttered facilities and realigning feeder school patterns. A vote is scheduled May 24.

Drawing some controversy is the proposal’s call to pair elementary schools to increase diversity, which one researcher says could actually backfire and prompt some families to move. David Armor, who is a retired public policy professor, criticized the plan in an email to the school board last week, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday. “During the desegregation era, I did extensive and detailed studies of white and middle class flight resulting from mandatory desegregation plans that used pairing to promote racial balance,” Armor said. “I believe that these two CMS pairings are likely to have similar impacts on white and middle class parents.”

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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