School board OKs $40,000 study

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009

By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
The Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education will spend $40,000 on a study that could help redraw attendance boundary lines.
The board voted 6-1 in favor of hiring Operations Research/Education Laboratory, a company that works through N.C. State University.
The research firm will likely finish its study by the end of April, board member Karen Carpenter said during Monday’s board meeting.
The company, which has worked with other school districts across the state, will consider growth patterns in Rowan County, transportation efficiency, neighborhoods and schools’ capacities, said Gene Miller, assistant superintendent for operations.
Analysts will also conduct a land-use study to help determine the best attendance boundary lines.
The board had the option of hiring the company to gather data without a land-use study. That would have cost $25,000.
But the land-use factor is important, said Carpenter, who is on a redistricting committee with fellow board members Bryce Beard and Jean Kennedy.
The committee recommended the $40,000 study to the board Monday evening.
“That may sound (like a lot), but let’s put it in this perspective: That’s $2 per student,” Carpenter said.
If the board chooses to implement the firm’s attendance plan, many of the school system’s nearly 21,000 students could eventually be affected.
The final proposal will be a 10-year plan, Carpenter said.
In the past, a lot of focus has been on North Rowan and Salisbury high schools when it comes to shifting lines. North Rowan’s enrollment has been shrinking, while students who live near the school attend Salisbury instead.
While this new plan could address those problems, Carpenter said it’s time for the board to think about attendance boundaries throughout the whole county.
Rowan, and its school system, will likely see growth, Beard said. The population jump Cabarrus County has experienced might make its way north.
A plan created by the research firm could be the fairest method of deciding where kids should go to school, Beard said.
“I think we’re trying to take that tribalism we experience in this county out of it,” he said.
A few years ago, the school board considered shifting attendance lines between North Rowan and Salisbury high schools. Some students who went to Salisbury would have been moved to North.
But Salisbury parents were quick to voice opposition. In the end, school leaders abandoned the plan.
The firm’s study and its plan will be based on data. Analysts will consider the school system’s enrollment numbers for the past six years and also the local birth rate, Miller said.
Subdivisions will also be considered. The plan will try to keep neighborhoods in the same attendance zones, he said.
“You really do take the politics out of it,” Carpenter said.
The plan could lay out capacity triggers for redistricting. For example, Miller said, it could say that each school should be about 82 percent full.Maintaining a certain capacity, though, might mean the board would have to “jump over” some neighborhoods when drawing attendance lines, Miller said.
If one neighborhood has too many elementary students, the students who live in an adjacent neighborhood might be marked for a certain school instead.
“That would be a hard sell,” Chairman Jim Emerson said.
But it wouldn’t be hard to convince parents of children who attend low-enrollment schools, Carpenter said.
Emerson said he wanted to be sure the board would not be obligated to adopt the plan the research firm creates.
The board will give the final approval to any plan, and the school system can dictate what it needs and wants from the firm, Carpenter said.
Board member Kay Wright Norman said if the board is willing to spend money on the study, it should tell the public it will trust the company to make a good plan.
“It’s unfair to kill it before we even get started with the study,” she said.
Board member Patty Williams cast the lone vote against hiring the firm.