#WCPSS Updates: Enrollment Caps, Busing & Teacher at center of $450k settlement resigns

This installment of Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) updates includes enrollment caps, busing and an update on the teacher at the center of a $450,000 settlement.

Some quick headline hits:

#1 – The teacher at the center of a $450K settlement has resigned

Teacher Marcus Campbell was the teacher at the center of that suit. He resigned from Wake County Schools last year and went to work at Durham Public Schools not long after. Read a recap of the situation here.

And the attorney and the family of the student are still asking questions.

It was only after the Wake County school board approved a $450,000 settlement with Oscar’s family that the family learned that Campbell was teaching at Northern Durham High School.

“It shouldn’t be that you have allegations that are made like this against a teacher and a teacher can leave and go to a neighboring school and be employed,” Gahagan said. (WRAL)

#2 – Enrollment caps are coming & Busing

WCPSS grew by 1,436 students in 2019, compared to 42 students the previous year. The board says 500 more students will be enrolling in WCPSS than previously projected. How that shakes out can be seen partly in proposed enrollment caps on 21 schools.

What does a cap mean? It means that when a school hits a certain threshold for attendance, new residents of an area have their students sent to a different school that has room for them. It’s sort of like the ‘last hired, first fired’ scenario.

New Caps (five elementary schools): Abbotts Creek, Alston Ridge, Beaverdam, Lead Mine, and White Oak.

Continued Caps (13 elementary schools): Cedar Fork, Combs, Harris Creek, Highcroft, Holly Grove, Hortons Creek, Mills Park, Oakview, Olive Chapel, Rogers Lane, Scotts Ridge, Sycamore Creek, and Weatherstone.

Continued Caps (One middle, two high schools): Mills Park Middle School and Heritage High and Panther Creek High.

It’s important to understand something about White Oak: it is only 3 years old and already out of space. Similarly, Oak View in Holly Springs was built and opened the same year as White Oak and it already has trailers behind it it was capped last year.

These crowding numbers in the image to the right are atrocious and the board’s use of trailers in these percentages is not ok and this is purposefully misleading about just how bad the crowding is in some schools.

Trailers were supposed to be temporary spaces, but have become permanent eyesores and are a huge unacknowledged security risk. The fact there are trailers behind nearly every school in the district speaks to a lack of planning foresight that goes back decades.

The board blamed some of the caps on the K-3 class size changes, which they and every other district in the state knew were coming since 2014 and were given budget flexibility to start making those changes, but none of them did. Those of us with a long memory can recall district superintendents lobbying the General Assembly for such a class size mandate in the ’90s. To cover up these facts, the “class size chaos” movement was started in part by the unofficial PR firms of WCPSS.

But that’s not all the board complained about:

But school leaders complained Wednesday that enrollment caps cost the district financially because it has to run bus service for the more than 700 students who already are capped out at schools this school year. It could cost $200,000 to run five more school buses to handle the new students who’d be capped this fall.

School leaders also acknowledged the impact capping will have on students, who could face bus rides of an hour each way in the morning and in the afternoon.

“It will be a long bus ride for those kids on the buses,” said David Neter, Wake’s chief operating officer. (N&O)

From the WCPSS enrollment cap presentation, “5 Additional buses @$40,000 each to total $200,000 a year,” and “Hiring additional drivers will continue to be the greatest challenge.”

One could argue the “greatest challenge” will be to keep said buses from bursting into flames, as they have done on two occasions so far.

What starts with Parents changes everything.

Sick of your student being constantly reassigned?

Tired of the district ignoring parent concerns and parental rights?

Fed up with social justice propaganda replacing academic subjects?

Upset with the invasion of student privacy?

Tired of the board’s attacks on school choice and charters?

If you answered yes to even one of the above, consider a run for School Board. 2020 is an election year for all nine Wake County School Board seats.

The candidate filing period opens in June.