By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
After rejecting the high school redistricting plan recommended by a committee of its members, the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education voted 4-3 Monday night to proceed with a plan that would leave the Salisbury High district intact.
Bryce Beard, Karen South Carpenter, Linda Freeze and Vice Chairwoman W. Jean Kennedy voted for the plan, presented as Study Map No. 2. Chairman Dr. Jim Emerson, Kay Wright Norman and Patty Williams voted against it.
There was standing room only as nearly 80 people turned out for the work session in the auditorium of the school system’s administrative offices at 110 N. Long St., East Spencer.
There may be a 2-A map, Emerson said.
Gene Miller, assistant superintendent for operations, proposed amending the map to keep all of the Westcliffe subdivision off Statesville Boulevard in the West district. The map currently has the neighborhood divided between the West and North districts, something he said the board wanted to avoid.
Amending the map would affect only 27 students, Miller said.
The board set the first of at least two public hearings on the map for Monday, Nov. 2, at Southeast Middle School provided there’s not anything else going on at the school that would create a conflict. The hearing will be at 6 p.m. to allow more people to attend.
The second public hearing will be held the following Monday on Nov. 9 at Knox Middle School. Emerson said another hearing will be set if there are still people who do not get a chance to speak at the first two.
Those who want to speak will be asked to put their names on a sign-up sheet before the hearing and will be limited to three minutes. “We will not allow people to give their three minutes to someone else so they can talk six minutes,” Emerson said.
He also suggested limiting the hearings to an hour and a half.
Carpenter asked some type of public forum such as a blog could be set up on the Rowan-Salisbury School System’s Web site so that people could comment on the proposed redistricting plan.
Dr. Rebecca Smith, assistant superintendent for curriculum, said a survey could be added to the Web site.
Miller said large copies of Study Map No. 2, with all street and road names identified, will be available at the administrative offices and all of the system’s schools for public viewing by next Monday. He also agreed to Norman’s suggestion that they also be placed in the county’s public libraries.
The board voted earlier in the work session to proceed with redistricting the high schools by a 5-2 vote, with Emerson and Norman opposing.
Carpenter contended that the vote was redundant, saying the board had made the decision to redistrict last October by voting to spend $40,000 on a redistricting study by OR/ED (Operations Research and Education Laboratory), an educational consulting company from N.C. State University.
OR/ED used state of the art technology factoring in extensive data and projected growth to come up with 26 plans that would meet the board’s directive of keeping utilization at each school between 80 and 87 percent.
Study Map No. 2 would increase the current 54 percent utilization at North Rowan to 87 percent. Growing concern about the declining enrollment at North prompted the board to consider redistricting the high schools in the first place.
North’s underutilization led to the school’s athletic teams being moved from a 2A to a 1A conference beginning this school year. Salisbury High is in a 2A conference, and Carson, East, South and West are in a 3A conference.
Other high school utilizations under the approved redistricting plan are as follows: East and North, 87 percent; Carson, 85 percent; and West 80 percent.
Projected ADM (average daily membership) at the schools under the plan are as follows: East, 1,167; Carson, 1,025; North, 959; South, 1,196; and West, 929.
In presenting the board’s Redistricting Committee’s recommendation to go with Study Map No. 1 at the Sept. 28 meeting, Carpenter said she, Beard and Kennedy chose it over Study Map No. 2 because they didn’t think it was right to exclude one high school from a redistricting plan.
“If we’re going to do this correctly,” she said then, “everybody needs to be a part of it.”
On Study Map No. 1, the Salisbury district would lose the Country Club neighborhood, Country Club Hills and Crescent to North. Study Map No. 1-A would leave the Country Club neighborhood and Country Club Hills in Salisbury, but move Crescent to North.
Freeze said she didn’t see the point of students from Crescent having to travel through Country Club Hills to get to North Rowan. “That’s just ridiculous,” she said.
Norman said she thought Study Map No. 1 and the amended 1-A map were “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” “There’s no reason to build up one school by tearing down another,” she said. “I think that’s the whole premise.”
One of the main problems, she contended, is the close proximity between Salisbury and North. Norman said the board could have eliminated that problem when it had the opportunity to build a new Salisbury High School farther away from North.
Beard said Carson, the system’s newest high school, and South are closer than Salisbury and North.
Norman said she was also concerned with the committee-recommended plan reducing the utilization at West.
Emerson said all of the maps will have some students traveling farther to get to school. “I just don’t know how you justify that to the public,” he said, adding that it affected the credibility of the board.Several people in the audience applauded until Emerson asked them not to.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.