School-attendance redistricting

could help us fix several things

Redrawing school-attendance districts in a manner suggested by the Center for Civil Rights would address several matters of concern facing our community.

First of all, redistricting would help stem the tide of racial re-segregation taking place in Johnston County (part of a nationwide phenomenon).

In "A Study of High School Attendance Areas, Diversity, and Capacity in Johnston County," North Carolina's independent Center for Civil Rights documents current racial disparities in our schools --- an imbalance accompanied by vast socio-economic differences and, predictably, student test results that stigmatize schools like Smithfield-Selma High as "low performing." It's no wonder SSS, with a minority enrollment of 71 percent African-American and Hispanic, gets a "D" grade on the state's "report card" while suburban Corinth-Holders with less than 30 percent minority enrollment gets a grade of "B" (one of only two schools countywide, including elementary and middle schools, that scored that high).

Meanwhile, Corinth-Holders is the largest and most "over-populated" high school in Johnston, and the only high school that's getting funds for classroom expansion from the recently approved county bond issue (24 additional classrooms).

That brings up another benefit of redrawing attendance boundaries: putting students where there's classroom space available before enlarging overcrowded schools or building new campuses.

Citing official data, the Center for Civil Rights points out that student enrollment at Corinth-Holders High is 128.7 percent higher than the high-school student population within its present district. Enrollment at Smithfield-Selma High, meanwhile, is just 83.8 percent of student population within its district. Obviously, many students are leaving their assigned districts to attend Corinth-Holders while a significant number of students are "fleeing" the SSS district to attend other schools (including the charter street across the street from Smithfield-Selma's campus).

Tightening the school system's transfer policy can put a damper on that disturbing trend, and it appears our school administrators are moving in that directon already.

But what about racial imbalance? The Center for Civil Rights offers a couple of redistricting scenarios that could shift the numbers to where no high school in Johnston County would have more than 49 percent of its student bodies classified as "minorities" (African-Americans plus Hispanics). And that could be done, the Center's co-director Mark Dorosin contends, without any more busing of students than what we have now while maintaining "contiguous, proportionate, unified attendance areas where all students in the geographic area are assigned to the same school."

Moving away from re-segregated schools would benefit the Smithfield community in its quest for stepped-up economic development, especially in attracting young families to make this place their home. The label of "low-performing schools" hurts our marketing efforts, not to mention what it does to the morale of our dedicated school teachers doing all they can to lift every child to his or her fullest potential.

As Johnston County continues to grow in population --- and that's a certainty, given our proximity to Raleigh and the Research Triangle --- our Board of Education will be compelled to revise school-attendance districts (and build more schools) in the years just ahead of us. The Center for Civil Rights has given the board some valuable tools to make things better as we move into that bright future.

By the way, if you didn't open the Civil Rights Center's full report from a link that appeared in last week's Sun, here it is again (as a PDF).

And then there's that school calendar

Apparently, the Johnston County Board of Education and our two local members of the N.C. House of Representatives are facing an uphill battle in convincing the General Assembly to allow our schools to open earlier than statewide law allows.

Johnston's school board is asking for a waiver so our schools may open in mid-August rather than August 26 as presently required. It makes sense for two good reasons: (1) the first semester can be completed before Christmas holidays without shortening the term as was the case this school year; and (2) our public schools could open in line with the fall-semester term at Johnston Community College, which provides a number of programs for students operated in conjunction with Johnston County Public Schools.

State Representatives Larry Strickland and Donna White say they'll once again support a waiver for Johnston County (they've done so before), but getting that waiver appears doubtful at this point because of continuing opposition among leaders of the N.C. Senate, who tend to side with tourism interests that don't want a shift in the summer vacation season.

Shouldn't the academic interests of students and parents and teachers rank ahead of what the beach folks want? Other states have seen the light of evenly splitting the school year with the long break at Christmas. North Carolina started out that way some years ago but reverted to the old calendar that makes about as much sense as high-school classes starting early in the day before teen-aged students are fully awake.

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