Hearing Thursday on Attendance Lines for New Schools

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Parents will have an opportunity to weigh in Thursday on the proposed attendance districts for two new public schools opening next fall.

The Moore County Board of Education will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. in the board room of the Central Office in Carth-age on the proposed attendance lines for Crain's Creek Middle and West Pine Elemen-tary schools.

The two schools are scheduled to open at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year.

Crain's Creek Middle is in the Union Pines High School attendance area. It will help to relieve overcrowding at New Century Middle, which is the only middle school presently serving that area.

West Pine Elementary is in the Pinecrest High School district. It will ease overcrowding at both West End and Pinehurst Elementary schools.

The school board is expected to make a final decision on the attendance lines at its regular meeting March 8. The board heard a presentation from Deputy Superintendent Larry Upchurch on the proposed attendance lines at its Jan. 7 meeting.

The attendance district proposal for West Pine Elementary pulls 315 students out of Pinehurst Elementary and about 114 students from West End Elementary, for a total of 429 students at the new school. About 30 percent of that population would be on free and reduced lunch.

West Pine Elementary will have a maximum capacity of 550 students. The plan would reduce the number of students at West End Elementary to about 460 students and Pinehurst Elementary to about 350.

Basically, the boundary divides Pinehurst by N.C. 211 and N.C. 5.

Students living in the Lake Pinehurst area, Clarendon Gardens, Village Acres, Pinewild and areas west of N.C. 5 and north of N.C. 211 would attend West Pine Elementary, while students living in Old Town, CCNC, Pinehurst No. 6, The Fairwoods on 7, the Monticello Road area and Jackson Hamlet would remain at Pinehurst Elementary.

Taylortown, Foxfire Village and Jackson Springs are included in the West Pine Elementary attendance district. Students attending Academy Heights Elementary would not be affected.

Students living in West End, Seven Lakes and Eagle Springs will remain at West End Elementary.

Upchurch said at the January meeting that the West Pine Elementary proposal was the school system's "best effort" to get the number of students it needed to populate the new school without breaking up communities.

Crain's Creek Middle represents a less complicated situation, and Upchurch floated two ideas for that school's boundaries.

The first option simply combines the attendance districts for Cameron Elementary and Vass-Lakeview Elementary. Under this option, all the students who reach sixth grade and attend those two schools would be assigned to Crain's Creek Middle. Upchurch said this option follows the school system's history of using a clear feeder pattern.

Under this plan, total enrollment at Crain's Creek next fall would be 393 students - 46 rising sixth-graders from Cameron Elementary, 79 rising sixth-graders from Vass-Lakeview Elementary and 142 rising seventh-graders and 126 rising eighth-graders from New Century Middle. About 60 percent of those students would be on free and reduced lunch.

Total capacity at Crain's Creek Middle is 550 students. The opening of the new school will drop total attendance at New Century to about 500 students.

The second option is very similar, but feeds the western portion of the Cameron Elementary attendance district to New Century because it's closer to their homes than Crain's Creek. Next year, it would send 17 students from that area to New Century - -three rising sixth-graders from Cameron Elementary, and 14 students in sixth and seventh grade already at New Century this year.

The second option could reduce school bus rides by almost an hour, Upchurch said.

Maps of the attendance proposals can be found on the school system's Web site - www.ncmcs.org.

Contact John Krahnert III at (910) 693-2473 or by e-mail at jkrahnert@thepilot.com.

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MLD206 3 years, 3 months ago

Im very pleased with the lines for the West Pine Elementary School. As a resident of Foxfire, the school location is better in many ways. In the case of having elementary and middle school aged children it will become even more beneficial. Now if they can just find somewhere to route the traffic.

CSmithson 3 years, 3 months ago

The location of the new West Pine Elementary does not provide for a ton of flexibility and it highlights yet another decision in a long string of Moore County Board of Education decisions since the 1990’s that further segregate our schools by race and class.

Almost every day in the News and Observer, we read about the new Wake County Board of Education and how the board majority’s platform will resegregate Wake County schools. We don’t face the staggering growth in student numbers and school construction that Wake has been facing, but the dangers and pitfalls of resegregation in our county schools are very real.

We don’t have the population density to redraw attendance districts in infinite ways like Wake does, so WHERE we build our schools is incredibly important too. The location of the new County high school can either improve things or encourage the trend of resegregation in Moore County Schools. Right now, Pinecrest is big and overcrowded but its student body is a decent representation of the diversity of the Southern Pines, Pinehurst, and Aberdeen area. The same is true of Union Pines and the areas it serves. The new high school will seek to relieve overcrowding in both high schools.

When we choose a location for the new high school and set its attendance district, we must take a great deal of care to ensure those balances are not changed in the existing schools and that the new school also reflects the diversity of southern Moore County. If we fail at this, our high schools will follow the paths of resegregation evident in our elementary and middle schools in recent years.

One does not need to be an expert in education or demographics to see stark differences in test performance and student body makeup between schools in our most populated areas. Compare NC School Report Cards between Southern Middle and West Pine- both among the newest of the county schools. Compare School Report Cards between Southern Pines Elementary and Pinehurst Elementary- both among the middle schools converted to elementary schools when new middle schools were built.

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CSmithson 3 years, 3 months ago

One does not need to be an expert in geography to be able to pick out some fishy attendance district lines. The most glaring might be right in the backyard of Southern Middle. A student living in CCNC could literally throw a rock over the gated community’s fence and have it land on the campus of Southern Middle. Strangely, that student would not be assigned to attend Southern Middle. Instead, they’d be sent all the way down 211 to West Pine. Though not a “stone’s throw” away, Southern Pines Primary and Elementary are closer to CCNC’s gate than Pinehurst Elementary.

One might argue that since CCNC is in Pinehurst, a student there should go to “Pinehurst” schools. First off, we have a county school system, not a municipal school system. Pinehurst and Southern Pines used to have municipal school systems but back in the 1960’s “county” voters- voters living outside those two towns, voted to absorb the city schools into the county system. Secondly, if attendance districts are based on what town you live in, then how is it that depending where you live in Southern Pines, you may be in any one of three different elementary/middle feeder patterns? Students living at National Golf Club go to West Pine. Students living in the Airport Rd area go to Sandhills Farm Life. Students living elsewhere go to Southern Middle.

Of course, there probably aren’t a ton of public school students living in CCNC, but it’s the principle.

Back to the subject of the main article- the attendance district for West Pine Elementary. Moore County Schools has just made a “best guess” when it comes to the new demographics of West Pine Elementary and Pinehurst Elementary. I think one of the more sketchy assumptions they make is that for the future demographics of Pinehurst Elementary. They told me they don’t expect to see much, if any, of a change. I just can’t see that being the case with the way the new lines are drawn. Geographically, the proposed district is overwhelmingly made up of golf communities (CCNC, National, #6, #7), Old Town, and Monticello. I can’t see how when one compares the current map to the proposed one they could assume the demographics of the school won’t change.

Moore County Schools has the largest budget ($100+ million) of any governmental entity in the county. Southern Moore County is a diverse area. All our schools should reflect this diversity, but they don’t. All our schools should perform roughly equally for students of all backgrounds, but they don’t. Our school districts and school locations should be chosen with careful attention to geography AND demographics, but they aren’t. Moore County taxpayers should be unhappy with unexplainable disparities between schools, but they aren’t. Any student living in the 10-mile circle that encompasses Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Aberdeen, and Whispering Pines, should be able to expect to be assigned to a school that performs similarly to other schools in this relatively compact area, but they can’t.