Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Manipulating Capacity to Fill Unpopular Schools
Why would the Long Range capacity at Durant Road Elementary be changed from 935 to 772? Maybe because a brand new school is opening across the street from DRES next year. Actually the school (E-20) is opening in the modular campus next year, which is located on Spring Forest Road about a block east of East Millbrook Middle School. Its permanent location across the street from Durant Road Elementary won't be open for a few years. Somebody has to fill that school and what better way than to have less capacity at Durant Road Elementary?
I am having an a-ha moment as I type this. Another nearby elementary school also had some strange things happening with its capacity. Wildwood Forest's capacity is 793 in the 2010-11 Facility Utilization Report, 644 in the assignment plan and has a current student population of 863. Interesting.
In the new controlled choice plan, filling new schools is all done by 'choice'. Nobody is reassigned to that new school and the new schools will open with only grades K-3. They keep emphasizing that nobody is assigned to a school--that we all choose the school we want our kids to go to. But if there isn't any capacity or there is reduced capacity, how much of a choice is there?
In the Student Assignment document document, they list the capacity for each grade at each school. You can find the 2011-12 student membership numbers for each school broken down by grade here.
Referring to those documents, you can see that for both Wildwood Forest and Durant Road Elementary schools, there are more students per grade than will be allowed under the new capacity figures in the assignment plan. They aren't going to kick any students out of those schools, but when newcomers enter the system, there won't be any seats for them at those schools and they will be sent somewhere else. Somewhere like E-20 or perhaps an under enrolled school that nobody wants to go to.
It will be very easy for WCPSS to manipulate the capacity numbers at schools in order to funnel kids where they ultimately want them to go. One of the selling points of this plan is supposed to be that staff will be able to tell very early on which schools are "under chosen" and then do something to help those schools attract families. First, we don't need a choice plan to tell us which schools are unpopular and will be under chosen. We've known for years and we've done nothing about them before. Second, it won't matter if a school is "under chosen"--if it's on your list you could end up there. Somebody has to go there and with the ability to manipulate capacity numbers at surrounding schools it will be easy to fill all of the schools.
I know that I am being very skeptical here, maybe even a bit paranoid, but after spending more than 6 years following WCPSS issues, I've earned my skepticism.
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2 comments:
Playing with capacity and when to cap a school is yet another trick wake schools will use to essentially short circuit choice. They are going to do it by playing with feeder patterns and forcing students into the new feeder patterns. They are going to do it by playing with no transportation and express bus transportation only so those with financial or logistical problems won't be able to attend choice school. They will do it by manipulation of the criteria for determining "achievement schools". They will do it by manipulating the choice list by node as there is no stated policy on how nodes will change node choice list. The plan never set out a realistic plan to fill new schools other than cross fingers and hope and hence they will use these more devious manipulation policies to do it.
There is almost no management of change wording in the policy and no transparency on how things change, why, or how much they will explain. It is obvious via the current process there is a lot manipulation of data going on, limited release of information, and release of good information for the plan and no balance of information.
Most of the aspects of the plan are good but do not trust that the right thing will be done because it is obvious that there will be many unhappy people in reality because of the details of implementation that can be manipulated to the school systems benefit and not the parent's or children's benefit.
it is pretty clear that the regional choice per the new choice list just released this morning illustrate the manipulation of achievement schools/regional choice. Capacity planning by not declaring some schools regional choice is very much underway. For instance, Apex HS is not a regional choice but it has higher scores than Holly Springs HS and Middle Creek HS. Both Holly Springs and Middle Creek are regional choices but Apex HS is not. It is an interesting manipulation to control capacity.
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