6200

STUDENT ASSIGNMENT

6200

The Board of Education’s goals for the student assignment process include:

• Creating stable school environments (families, classmates, and peers)
• Protecting the ability to offer quality programs in every school
• Collaborating with the community (all parties/stakeholders)
• Creating and maintaining a diverse student body.
• Alleviating overcrowding
• Filling seats efficiently
• Achieving academic success for all children
• Providing a logical progression between elementary, middle, and high school
• Creating good teaching conditions (the social, emotional, and physical environment).
• Retaining good teachers
• Ensuring consistency across the System over time
• Building a sense of community and connection (i.e. neighborhoods, parent involvement)
• Fairness

Maintaining diverse student populations in each Wake County school is critical to ensuring academic success for all students.  This is supported by research.  The school system will also consider other factors that impact communities, families and costs.

Each student enrolled in the Wake County Public School System shall be assigned to the school of his or her grade level serving the attendance area in which that student’s parents or court-appointed custodian is domiciled and the student resides. Exceptions will be made as necessary to limit enrollment of a school due to overcrowding or for special programmatic reasons such as the need for special education services or alternative school programs.  Each student will have the option of applying for admission to one of the magnet educational programs offered in designated schools or to a school which operates on a different calendar than the assigned school.

All of the following factors, not in priority order, will be used in the development of the annual student assignment plan.  While absolute balance of each factor across all schools is not achievable, comparability between neighboring schools in regard to each factor is the desired outcome of the student assignment process.

A. 

Populations of Students With Higher Needs

The student assignment plan will create balance across schools in the distribution of students who:

1.

are eligible to receive free or reduced price lunches in the child nutrition program,

2.

perform below grade level on End-of-Grade tests,

3.

are identified as being Limited English Proficient (LEP),

4.

require services from Special Education programs.¹

Whenever any of the following targets are exceeded, the Board directs the Superintendent to review the reasons for exceeding the target, study trends across several years, and recommend ways in which the student assignment plan could help achieve the targets:

1.

Less than 25% of students at any school, averaged across a two-year period, will score below grade level on the Reading End-of-Grade test.

2.

Less than 40% of students at any school will qualify for free or reduced price lunches.

B.

Facility Utilization

The student assignment plan will seek optimal utilization of each school’s long-range capacity and, whenever possible, reduce utilization of mobile or modular classrooms that cause a school to operate at more than the approved long-range capacity. ²

C.

Alignment With The Magnet Schools Program

The student assignment plan will include a review of the extent to which the systemwide objectives of the Magnet Program are being achieved.

D.

Grade Structure

The student assignment plan will adhere to K-5, 6-8, 9-12 grade organization whenever possible with consideration for moving groups of students together across levels.

E.

Stability Of Assignment

Nodes will remain assigned to the schools at each level (Elementary, Middle, High) for at least three years before being considered for reassignment, whenever possible.

F.

Distance

Proximity of nodes to assigned schools will be considered, and no student should travel more than the maximum time established by Board Policy 7125.

Footnote:

^1.  Board policy regarding special education services is specified in Board Policy 6222.

^2. Long-range capacity is defined as the capacity of the permanent building(s) plus the capacity of the optimal number of mobile or modular classrooms for the campus.

Legal Reference:  

G.S.115C-366; -367

Cross Reference:  

Policies 6202, 6203, and 7125

Adopted:

May 4, 1981

Revised:

January 17, 1983

Revised:

May 16, 1983

Revised:

November 18, 1991

Revised:

April 21, 1997

Revised:

January 10, 2000

Revised:

March 18, 2003

Revised:

December 4, 2007