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Two popular Myers Park schools – Myers Park High and Myers Park Traditional Elementary – appear to have fended off proposed changes that have generated a firestorm of community activism.
A proposal to put the Myers Park elementary magnet students into the smaller Eastover Elementary building won't work, Assistant Superintendent Joel Ritchie said today. “We wanted to say we put all the options out there,” he said, but “the more we studied it, the more complex it got.”
And Tom Tate, the board member whose August motion to move students from Myers Park High to East Mecklenburg set off weeks of student-assignment drama, said today he doesn't think moving International Baccalaureate magnet students would benefit either school. Instead, he said he'll focus on finding ways to reduce the cuts to East Meck's faculty when the school shrinks from more than 2,100 students this year to about 1,500 next year when boundaries change because of a new high school.
The enrollment drop is expected to cost the school at least 30 teachers, who would have a chance to transfer to other high schools.
A majority of board members recently shot down a proposal to move neighborhood students from the Cotswold Elementary zone from Myers Park to East. The only staff options left involve moving IB students, but Tate said today he still hopes the staff and board will consider other boundary changes. However, he said he's heard no support for that idea from other board members.
“At this point I don't see any good option for moving students,” he said, but added that he hopes a better plan will emerge.
Tate, board chair Molly Griffin and the board's two newest members, Kimberly Mitchell-Walker and James Ross, spent Friday touring schools that could be affected by proposed changes. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools gave a similar tour for the media today.
Ross and Mitchell-Walker said today that even though Myers Park High has about 2,960 students, they didn't see signs that crowding is a problem on the 62-acre campus, which has 13 buildings and 22 mobiles.
“Nothing stuck out to say, ‘This is awful. This is too much,'” Mitchell-Walker said.
Tate said it doesn't make sense to reassign IB magnet students when enrollment is in flux because of new requirements that they pursue an IB diploma. In previous years, some magnet students took IB classes but didn't meet all the demands for the diploma. Eliminating the “partial IB” option is expected to shrink enrollment at the district's five high-school IB magnets, including both Myers Park and East Meck.
All four who toured Eastover Elementary say they're convinced it needs quick relief. The school has 589 students in a building the principal says is ideal for about 430. The district's latest numbers, which show the building has a capacity of 576, are based on the current arrangement, with the art and music rooms and auditorium converted into classrooms and some teachers doubling up, with two teachers leading an extra-large class in one room.
Myers Park Traditional has 738 students this year. While the district can control how many magnet students it admits, both Ritchie and planning director Scott McCully have now indicated there's no realistic way to make that student body fit into Eastover's building next year.
That shifts the spotlight to plans for moving about 113 students who live in the Dilworth neighborhood from Eastover to First Ward Elementary, which has 376 students in a 6-year-old building that could hold up to 800. First Ward is expected to shrink even further next year, when it loses its “accelerated learning” magnet. At a meeting last week, McCully said it might make sense to move an even larger part of Eastover's zone into First Ward.
One staff option simply moves the students to First Ward, while another would make First Ward a performing arts magnet and put the newly merged First Ward-Dilworth neighborhoods into Dilworth Elementary. Board members and parents from all affected elementaries say they hope to craft better options before the Nov. 10 vote.
CMS will hold a second community meeting on the high-school proposals from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Myers Park High, 2400 Colony Road. Myers Park IB magnet students and families are mobilizing to defend the program that they say distinguishes their school nationally.
The district will hold a second meeting on the Eastover options from 6:30 to 8:30 Thursday at Myers Park High.
