By Maggie Blackwell
mblackwell@salisburypost.com
The rate for student transfers from one high school to another is not 1 in 10, Dr. Walter Hart told school board members at Monday night’s meeting. It’s closer to 3 out of 100.
And with that information, the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education is again taking up the issue of redistricting.
Consultants Jeff Tsai and Tom Cook with Durham firm OR/Ed told the board two weeks ago that 620 of the system’s 6,450 high-schoolers have transferred to another school.
Using a series of charts and spreadsheets, Hart walked board members through the numbers Monday. Of the 620 students attending schools other than their home assignment, 380 were incorrectly identified as transfers. They include:
– Those placed in Henderson Independent School, 99 students;
– Placement in Early College, 70;
– Special Education placements, 42;
– Homeless or foster children, seven;
– School choice from an earlier board decision, six;
– Students attending another school without permission, 39.
Also, errors in the consultants’ data accounted for 117 of the students identified as transfers.
Errors in the data resulted from duplicate street names in various cities and towns in the system, such as Main Street in both China Grove and Salisbury, or Long Street in both Salisbury and North Spencer.
This leaves 240 legitimate transfers to other high schools. Of that number, 119 are children of school system employees, who, until Monday night, could send their children to the school of their choice.
The remaining 121 students attend other high schools with approved transfers.
The North Rowan High School community asked the school board to look at the issue when the school’s athletic teams were downgraded from 2A to 1A because of the school’s low population.
Board member Bryce Beard moved to grant North Rowan High open enrollment. He said said a program to use iPods in the classroom, a medical academy and other initiatives could draw incoming students. Beard said the board gave Salisbury High open enrollment in 2000 with positive results. The motion failed.
Gene Miller, assistant superintendent of operations, will ask OR/Ed to develop a preliminary redistricting map for review at the next school board meeting.
Board members specified the goal is not necessarily to increase enrollment at North Rowan, but to achieve “equitable distribution” of students. This means that all Rowan-Salisbury high schools would have similar populations.
In other school board business, North Rowan High School Principal Rodney Bass and freshman English teacher Natalie Wittich presented results of the iPod Project. Ten North High students paired up with school board members to personally show them the applications they use in the classroom. The room buzzed as students and board members enthusiastically worked with the devices.