CMS is building a new south Charlotte high school. Some parents already want out.
South Charlotte parents are rallying around existing boundaries with a new high school scheduled to shift feeder patterns in August 2024.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is gathering feedback through community meetings before reassigning students in the district’s three largest high schools — Myers Park, Ardrey Kell and South Mecklenburg — and dozens of elementary and middle schools that feed into them. The new school will be at 12218 North Community House Road, near Interstate 485.
Claire Schuch, director of planning services for CMS, told The Charlotte Observer officials haven’t finalized particular scenarios, but draft options worry parents.
Laura Grant, a parent who lives in the Myers Park High zone, says she’s concerned about the way the district is handling rezoning efforts and wants better transparency. Schuch’s response: “Everything we have are drafts, drafts, drafts.”
“I cannot stress this enough. We’re still holding community meetings. We still have surveys. We’re still doing analysis. We haven’t really figured anything out,” Schuch said. “We’re trying to narrow it down to three, but we’re hoping to hear diverse voices from different groups first.”
The school board is scheduled to vote on the new high school’s a reassignment plan in February, but Schuch says the five new CMS school board members need more time after being sworn in Dec. 13.
Summer Nunn, the newly-elected District 6 school board member, represents feeder schools and attendance zones for South Mecklenburg High. She agreed about the need for more time and said the south Charlotte area needs another high school so students “aren’t crammed” into three over-capacity schools.
“We have to do the work to figure out what is best for the students and community, which is complex,” Nunn said, “but the end result should come with excitement that we are adding a high school.”
Shift away from Myers Park “unnecessary”
Grant is a parent of a 10th grade student at Myers Park High and seventh-grader at Randolph IB Middle School.
Grant started a petition on change.org in late November because current and former parents of Sharon Elementary students do not want to be split off. Parents contend draft plans show some or all of Sharon Elementary families being rezoned from Myers Park to South Mecklenburg High.
“The maps keep showing time after time again that Sharon is potentially going to be moved,” said Grant, whose petition has amassed 412 signatures.
Grant and other families say keeping them in Myers Park’s zone means less family disruption and shorter commute times. It’s unnecessary, Grant said.
“Housing development around South Meck, Ardrey Kell and the new relief school continues to bring additional enrollment to those school zones,” Grant wrote in the petition. “Myers Park development is leading to a decrease in student enrollment, making the change unnecessary.”
Community sessions began in March. School meetings will continue Wednesday and run through at least the third week of December. Meetings are scheduled for 8 a.m., Wednesday at Olde Providence Elementary, 8:45 a.m., Friday for Alexander Graham Middle and Sharon Elementary parents at Alexander Graham, and 6:30 p.m., Dec. 13 at Ballantyne Elementary, among others.
Community wide meetings begin in early January. Dates and times have yet to be determined.
CMS parent feedback crucial
A group of 266 parents created the private Facebook page “Voice for Rational OP Feeder Pattern.” Administrators of the page didn’t respond to messages.
The group says it’s mostly families with students who attend Olde Providence Elementary on Rea Road. That group is mobilizing because five drafts show Olde Providence Elementary students rezoned for South Mecklenburg instead of Myers Park.
They “want a feeder pattern that makes the most sense for our community,” according to the page’s description.
The CMS school board’s decision matrix for school boundary decisions includes home to school distance, intact feeder patterns and socioeconomic diversity, according to policy and a planning services department presentation in November.
Board members also consider factors such as keeping entire neighborhoods assigned to the same school and projections for population growth and demographic shifts.
The new relief high school, which hasn’t been named, sits in the South Mecklenburg High zone, just north of the Ardrey Kell High zone. Myers Park, South Mecklenburg and Ardrey Kell combined serve more than 10,500 students, according to 2022-23 enrollment data. All three are over capacity by hundreds of students.
And the number of students in the area is expected to increase. Families moving into the Ballantyne area in four to five years, are predicted to add 75 high school students, according to a city Of Charlotte staff analysis. Families in South Mecklenburg High subdivisions are expected to grow the number of students by nearly 70.
“We need to make sure we listen to parents and incorporate their feedback,” Nunn said. “It will be hard because you are moving from three schools to four schools in the same area, leading to students switching to a new high school than they were originally intended to attend so we have to be thoughtful using data and community feedback.”
New school part of CMS construction boom
The new high school will have 100 classrooms, hold about 2,500 students and cost more than $158.8 million. The building will have a performing arts and music space, career and technical education space and room for visual arts classrooms. The site will include an athletics plaza, sports fields and a courtyard. It will open in 2024 with ninth-, 10th- and 11th-grade students. Rising seniors will stay at their previous school.
The project, which was about 9% complete in an October update, is part of a record $922 million in CMS bonds voters approved in 2017. Approval cleared the way for a surge of school construction — 10 new schools, replacement of buildings for seven existing schools and renovations at 12 schools.
So far, 14 projects are complete, 12 are under construction and three are in the design phase.
This story was originally published December 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
