Parents say south Charlotte CMS plan ‘gives me nightmares.’ Here’s what’s driving worries
Bo King stands in the backyard of his Providence Springs home some days during the school year and listens to free, live music.
King, who moved to south Charlotte in 2021 and has three daughters, lives within earshot of Providence High School and can hear its band practice. The school is 1.9 miles from his house — a four-minute drive and an 11-minute bike ride for his oldest child, who will be a ninth-grader next year.
“She’s already planned her route,” King said. “It would free her and her younger sisters from hours in cars or on buses every week — a particular concern given the traffic and exploding construction in our area, compounded by (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’) strapped transportation budget.”
But an 11-minute bike ride may not be in his daughter’s future if plans drafted by CMS come to fruition.
A new high school opening in the 2024-25 year and a planned middle school are forcing CMS to redraw boundaries in some of the most affluent parts of the county — south Charlotte. Redistricting aims to relieve overcrowding, use school space more efficiently and ensure diverse schools.
The district’s latest proposal sends hundreds of families, including King’s, to a high school several miles away from their neighborhoods. It will be about a 30-minute commute including traffic.
“The current draft would have (young drivers) on the road for almost 20 miles every day, and the idea of those first 8 miles at 7 a.m. gives me nightmares,” King said. “We know the impact of protracted school commutes on learning and sleep. And I don’t want them to miss out on extracurricular activities because it’s just too hard to get there and back.”
Samantha Farnham, whose children attend Olde Providence Elementary, says the plan doesn’t make sense.
“We don’t have a problem with any other high school in the district,” Farnham said. “We would send our kids to any of them if they were 5 minutes away like Providence High. We want to be close to our school.”
How does CMS decide?
CMS works within school board policy to decide district boundaries, says Dennis LaCaria, executive director of facilities and real estate planning. Home-to-school distance is one of the four main priorities for student assignment.
But so is keeping feeder patterns together, creating socioeconomically diverse schools and maximizing building use.
The latest proposal creates better socioeconomic diversity at three of what will be five high schools in south Charlotte: Myers Park, South Mecklenburg and the new high school. Ardrey Kell and Providence High would continue to have a high concentration of affluent students compared to those who come from low income families, with Ardrey Kell becoming less diverse.
The latest plan also gives Providence High the lowest enrollment of the other high schools and makes it the most underutilized school.
“I believe in diversity, I bring diversity,” said Gianina “Gia” Hink, an Olde Providence Elementary parent who wants her children to attend Providence High and moved to the U.S. from Venezuela when she was 15. “It wasn’t diverse back then. But I was close to the school and proximity helped me find a community. I want my kids to have that community. The closer they are, it will also be easier to get my kids to school events and help juggle their schedules.”
Hink graduated from North Mecklenburg High School.
Board members had a tense discussion at its meeting last Tuesday on how CMS has historically missed the mark during comprehensive reviews of its schools. The reviews ultimately impact student assignments and feeder pattern changes.
Lisa Cline, whose district covers much of south Charlotte, has taken the brunt of the south Charlotte boundary criticism and wants the board to take its time the next time the district changes boundaries.
“What’s happening in south county is going to affect the whole district,” Cline said about parent perceptions. “What we’re seeing, the feedback, the multiple wealth of emails we’re getting on an hourly basis, will only happen throughout the whole district.”
Olde Providence Elementary parents who want to go to Providence High are focused on convenience.
“The sprawl of our old zone was bizarre,” King said. “It made no sense for us to drive almost 8 miles to Myers Park when Providence was just around the corner. When we bought the house, I assumed they’d fix that in redistricting. But sending us 8 miles in a different direction to South Meck makes no sense for exactly the same reasons.”
LaCaria told The Charlotte Observer a third plan will be released May 15, and the community will be able to provide another round of feedback.
Diversity over convenience
Of 97 traditional CMS elementary schools, 15 have one or more “splits” after elementary school — meaning not all of a building’s students go through middle and high school together.
Olde Providence Elementary already contains a split: roughly 150 students go to South Charlotte Middle and Providence High. Around 375 go to Carmel Middle and Myers Park High.
The latest CMS proposal keeps the split intact, except that the majority would go to South Mecklenburg instead of Myers Park. And the opposition isn’t unanimous.
Julie Woody’s children are in the Myers Park split. Woody grew up in Charlotte and both of her parents taught in the district. She wants her children to go to South Mecklenburg.
“I prefer a more diverse environment for my boys over keeping elementary school children together,” Woody said.\
School board members have received dozens of emails from Olde Providence Elementary parents who agree with Woody and want the latest draft to stick, asserting diversity matters over convenience.
Shawn Bowers, a former CMS teacher, wrote the school board last week that students from diverse high school settings perform better in college and have more social and emotional awareness.
“Diverse schools better prepare students for the pluralistic society we live and work in,” wrote Bowers, who also is a parent of two Olde Providence students.
What a 2017 survey said
CMS, in advance of the school board’s massive student reassignment review in 2017, conducted a survey that showed the majority of parents wanted the board to prioritize neighborhood schools. Of the more than 24,000 respondents, 86% said schools that are close to home are very or extremely important.
“Our message has been simple and clear — this is about one thing for my family — going to the closest high school,” said parent Scott Salam, whose daughter attends Myers Park High. “I most certainly want my daughter to finish out her 11th and 12th grade years at MPHS. But for the neighborhood as a whole going forward, Providence (High) is the most logical school.”
Heather Koons, of nonprofit Public Schools First NC, told the Observer living closer to school can build community. But it’s also important for districts to have racially and socially integrated schools.
“That takes intentional plans for school boundaries and sometimes busing students to less proximate schools,” Koons said. “If drawing school boundaries to maximize proximity also creates segregated or high-poverty schools, then different boundaries or other options should be put in place.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
