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CMS leaders look to redraw school boundaries in student assignment plan

By Elsa Gillis
By Elsa Gillis

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Leaders from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are looking to redraw school boundaries as part of the student assignment plan that could leave children uprooted from their current schools.

The goals are to break up concentrations of poverty, create diversity and help low-performing schools.

Channel 9 anchor Elsa Gillis spoke to the new CMS superintendent and four West Charlotte graduates who argue Charlotte could learn from its past.

"I think it is important to re-embrace our history and let it inform our future," Justin Perry told Channel 9, surrounded by three of his fellow West Charlotte High School graduates.

That history has been heavy on their minds.

"I know West Charlotte for us is a different place than when we were there," Eric Leaf said.

Leaf grew up in Dilworth, and Siobhan Johnson grew up in University City. Perry came from northeast Charlotte, and Katie Hughes from the Lake Wylie area.

But they graduated together from West Charlotte in 1999.

The same year, the monumental ruling in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools was overturned, ending race-based student assignment.

But for a quarter-century prior, busing and eventually magnets were used to desegregate schools.

It was tumultuous at times, but each of them believes it shaped the community for the better.

"I was socially awkward, I looked weird at the time, this biracial person," Johnson said. "Going to a school that was diverse was really important. When everyone kind of has a thing and when everyone is different, then nobody is."

"I was getting a quality real-life, real-world education," Hughes said.

"They marketed the fact that you could come, live anywhere and send your kid to school all around," Perry said. "It wasn't just that you had to live in two or three neighborhoods."

Eighteen years later, as CMS reviews boundaries and home school assignments, many parents said the focus should stay on keeping neighborhoods together, improving schools closer to students' homes and giving choice for those who want it.

And over the past year, passionate parents have made that argument, filling school board and community meetings.

"I think this is a poverty issue that needs to be addressed by the city and not just the school system," one parent told Channel 9..

"Dismantling successful schools within communities carefully chosen by parents will not fix the fundamental problems of failing schools," another parent said at a school board meeting.

"I think the reason in particular that people, parents in particular don't like busing, it's not necessarily that they don't like the busing, it's that they want to feel at the end of the bus ride is going to get something better than what they have if they have a short bus ride," Hughes said.

Incoming superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox said the key is making every school unique and appealing.

"If you have a great neighborhood school but if you have a child that's mechanically inclined and you have a program down the road that has a robotics program, I think you'll voluntarily choose to go there," he said.

Wilcox said to make every school great, we need to shake things up.

That means introducing new technology, bringing in community leaders to teach students and changing the average school size, timing and structure of the day to reach all types of students.

He said he recognizes the school system can only do so much and needs support from the entire community.

He also said parents must be flexible.

"People have to be respectful of the larger changes that are going on within our community as well, and things just aren't always the same,” Wilcox said.

The CMS graduates recognize that times have changed since they were in school, but said they hope what they experienced together isn't forgotten.

"We're a community, so to me it's not about neighborhood schools versus diverse schools. It's: How do we as a community educate ourselves with each other?" Perry said.

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