‘It won’t be the experience we want’: South Charlotte parents resist reassigning students
Parents vow to pull their children from the district’s successful language magnet pathway program if it’s moved from South Mecklenburg High School to the new E.E. Waddell Magnet High School when it opens in fall 2022.
And students are pleading with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education to not even consider the move.
“We are a successful school with so much diversity and culture, and I don’t see why this has to change,” said Nadia Bolden, a sophomore at South Mecklenburg High who began her journey in a French language program in kindergarten.
“We should be the example and not the experiment. And I’ll say it in French,” she told board members at a public hearing last week.
Students and parents say CMS should “hit pause” on a scenario that would “change a perfectly fine high school.”
The World Language Academy that offers studies in five languages and represents 22% of South Mecklenburg’s total enrollment is a flashpoint as the district considers reassigning some students to relieve excess capacity issues at a number of schools.
District officials presented a 55-page review, which included a scope of scenarios and community feedback involving Southeast Elementary, Lincoln Heights Elementary, Olympic High and E.E. Waddell Magnet High.
Recommendations would shuffle students to different schools at the elementary and high school levels in various parts of the city, but a plan involving South Mecklenburg has drawn the most attention — and criticism.
“I am opposed to the proposal which would move the language program to Waddell,” Doug Benson, a parent of two students at South Mecklenburg who are not part of the language program, told school board members during the public hearing. Benson was one of more than 50 members of the public who spoke.
“South Meck has become a shining example of a high school, which reflects the rich diversity of our community,” he said.
While a few board members said they want to delay a decision on student reassignments, district officials are in the process of narrowing scenarios toward a single recommendation for each school. The community will then be asked for feedback on draft recommendations before a final recommendation is brought to the board no later than July 13.
‘We had no clue’
Moving the staple world language program would relieve South Mecklenburg of more than 700 students and create the opportunity to provide partial relief to Myers Park High School, district officials said.
K-8 students who currently attend the E.E. Waddell Language Academy are being relocated to the new South Academy of International Languages (SAIL) beginning this fall. The building will sit empty for a year while officials make repairs and get it ready to become a magnet high school next year.
“I want the language magnet to stay at South Meck because after being at Waddell for nine years, we are all ready for a change,” said Juliette Macnamara, who was part of the last eighth-grade class to graduate from the K-8 Waddell Language Academy. She will head to South Mecklenburg High this fall to continue studying French.
“We all want to go to a bigger school and meet new friends and play sports and have more opportunities and get the full high school experience that South Meck can give us.”
The district also will have to grapple with more reassignments when two more planned high schools open between 2023-25.
Of the 1,197 survey responses the district received on the Waddell Magnet proposal — the majority are not currently enrolled in either Myers Park or South Mecklenburg — 81% said they would prefer the world language program remain at South Mecklenburg.
Sabine Macnamara has three children enrolled in the current E.E. Waddell Language Academy for K-8 students, including Juliette.
“I am, sadly, one of the many parents who would not continue on the language magnet path if it were to leave South Meck and move to Waddell,” she said.
Macnamara said she wants her children to have the “full high school experience.” She said: “That’s what’s happening. It won’t be the experience we want.”
Macnamara and other parents during Tuesday night’s public hearing questioned the district’s communication on the reassignment scenarios. Many claimed they had no idea the proposals were being worked up.
Parents also said they never saw the initial survey soliciting feedback the district made available earlier in the spring.
“We had no clue,” Macnamara said. “The first survey came at the bottom of an email.”
Macnamara said only 145 people filled out the first survey. The district’s second survey drew hundreds more participants: 938 people responded to a community feedback survey regarding a reassignment scenario that relieves overcrowding at Olympic High.
Questions sent to Superintendent Earnest Winston and Associate Superintendent Akeshia Craven-Howell for comment about the survey process did not receive responses.
Macnamara created her own survey and sent it to parents of all seventh- and eighth-grade students at the Waddell Language Academy, as well as Collinswood Language Academy, another program that serves K-8 students and feeds into the World Language Academy currently at South Mecklenburg.
The results: 78% of families from both language academies voted to keep the world language magnet program at South Mecklenburg High.
Of 75% of eighth-graders surveyed who will be continuing with the language magnet at South Mecklenburg this coming fall, 27% said they would go to Waddell if the magnet program was moved in their 10th-grade year.
The results were similar for seventh-grade families.
“Based on these percentages, out of the 260 South Mecklenburg magnet students in the class of 2025, only 70 would continue on to Waddell High School in the 10th grade,” Macnamara said. “Hopefully the decision isn’t final, and the CMS nail hasn’t already been put into the language magnet coffin.”
Making calculated decisions
School Board member Rhonda Cheek, a South Mecklenburg High alum, wants her colleagues to consider tabling a decision on student reassignment until there is updated enrollment data, among other information.
“It’s very hard to make these calculated decisions,” Cheek said. “I’m asking for a delay on the entire project. It’s our duty to take our time.”
Beyond the schools involved in the Waddell scenario, Garinger High School teacher Greg Asciutto contends that East Charlotte has been advocating for a world language magnet “since well before the last student assignment review in 2016.”
“We believe that a partial language magnet here now would help relieve overcrowding at South Mecklenburg (and) allow that school to retain its current program and give east side families the course offerings they have long-pined for and deserve,” Ascuitto told the board during the public hearing.
“We do have the demand for language programs.”
School Board member Carol Sawyer said at the meeting she felt the board was listening to the South Mecklenburg High community in a way “that we have never listened to other parts of the town. I know that my community in east Charlotte has not felt heard.
“We talk about equity being the through line in everything that we do. The response of this board to the pressure, frankly, that we are getting from Myers Park and southeast Charlotte residents is intense and frankly has nothing to do with student outcomes.”
She continued: “My emails are running heavily weighted toward ‘my property values’ and ‘my entitlement to go to a particular school because I could afford to buy into that part of town.’
“I just have to raise that, because I am deeply offended by some of the emails that I am getting and the level of privilege and entitlement that is expressed in them — as well as the utter disregard for our students who attend other schools and the affront that they would have to attend a school that might not have just other wealthy white people.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
