Wake will reassign more than 1,700 students to different schools. Is your child moving?

Wake County’s newly approved student assignment plan could move 1,769 students to different schools next year.

The Wake County school board unanimously approved Wednesday a plan that’s supposed to ease crowding at some schools and help fill other campuses for the 2023-24 school year. Many of the families affected by the plan can avoid being moved if they agree to drive their children to school.

“This is certainly a difficult piece for our families,” said board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey. “We know that it’s not easy.”

Parents can look for the plan’s details at wcpss.net/enroll. Wake will contact the families who are directly affected by the approved changes. The plan moves students out of 29 schools. The district has 160,000 students.

Historically, most of the moves in the annual reassignment plan involve filling new schools. No new schools are scheduled to open in the 2023-24 school year.

Student assignment staff say some students need to be reassigned, though, to ease crowding at some schools, fill seats at other campuses and reduce the number of bus routes.

Assignment priorities

The plan is based on four pillars: student achievement (diversity), stability, proximity and operational efficiency. But Wake says no pillar is more important than the other.

However, Wake is facing a crunch finding enough bus drivers, so some students are being moved to a closer school to reduce how many bus routes are needed.

Some of the students being moved to closer schools are in areas that were historically bused to promote diversity in enrollment.

For instance, Wake will relieve crowding at North Ridge Elementary in Raleigh by sending some students to Bugg Elementary. Those largely minority and lower-income students live close enough to walk to Bugg but were sent to North Ridge to increase diversity.

“I’m concerned about transportation being the tail that wags the dog,” said board member Roxie Cash.

Some calendar-application students will also lose bus service if they choose to stay at their current school as Wake tries to cut bus routes. They can get transportation if they go to their assigned school.

Stability transfers

Wake will open a “stability transfer period,” or what used to be called “grandfathering,” from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 for people who don’t want to move to a different school.

All students affected by the assignment changes can remain at their current school if they file a request during the stability transfer period and agree to provide their own transportation.

Students who are entering kindergarten, sixth grade or ninth grade can avoid being moved if they’ll be attending the same school next year as an older sibling.

Some parents complained during a public hearing last week that the transfer request doesn’t provide stability if it doesn’t come with transportation from the district.

“A ‘stability transfer’ without transportation does provide challenges for some families,” Susan Pullium, senior director for student assignment, told the board. “While we recognize that, the situation that we’re in we can’t continue to offer transportation to both schools.”

Few changes

Wednesday’s vote ends a process that began when the first draft was presented in September.

Only a handful of changes were made to the second draft presented in October and the final draft presented Wednesday.

A last minute-change added the reassignment of students from Salem Middle School in Apex to Carnage Middle School in Raleigh. The change was added to mirror a move already in the plan to send that neighborhood to a closer elementary school.