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CMS widens scope of south Charlotte boundary changes, with 43 schools possibly affected; public meetings restart, decision draws closer
There are just over nine weeks until Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is expected to decide where thousands of south Charlotte students will attend school in the coming years.
The district is preparing to open a new high school in the fall of 2024 to relieve overcrowding at Ardrey Kell, South Mecklenburg and Myers Park high schools, and potentially a new middle school in the fall of 2025 to relieve overcrowding at Community House, Jay M. Robinson and Rea Farms if voters approve a school bond this November.
The school board had been expected to vote on new high school boundaries in February, but district leaders paused the process in January, saying the addition of a new proposed south Charlotte middle school required more analysis, as they’d need to decide elementary, middle and high school boundaries in tandem to avoid more disruption later.
The redrawing of south Charlotte school boundaries was a matter of huge interest across south Charlotte during the last half of 2022, with crowds of parents packing meetings in school libraries and signing up to speak to the school board to hear about plans and make their voices heard.
It’s been relatively quiet on the boundary front since January, when the district announced it would delay the decision and pause public meetings while it came up with a plan to draw both middle and high school lines.
Now, the pause is over, as school officials are about to embark on a series of community meetings to get feedback on their proposed boundary lines and work toward a May decision.
The potential impact of the changes are vast: CMS officials say that the boundary changes could affect five high schools, 10 middle schools and 28 elementary schools:
Parent Facebook groups devoted to the boundary decisions are coming back to life. A CMS parent work group devoted to the new boundaries restarted meetings on Monday, and the district rolled out a list of virtual and in-person public meetings where families can see proposed maps and give feedback. (Click on this link and go to “community engagement” to see the list of meetings and Zoom links.)
The first pair of community “reset” meetings included a noon Zoom yesterday and an in-person meeting today at 6:30 p.m. at Myers Park High.
Three more meetings will be held between March 27-30 to show the public a draft scenario, which CMS officials said will incorporate feedback they got from the public last year. Another three meetings are scheduled for April 19-21 for the second scenario round.
A public hearing during a CMS school board meeting is scheduled for May 9, with a board vote expected May 23.
The Ledger attended a media briefing (you can watch that here) and a Zoom community meeting Tuesday aimed at explaining how the process will roll out.
Here are five key takeaways we gleaned:
🏫 Expect to see fewer scenarios this time. CMS planning director Claire Schuch told reporters Tuesday that the public will see one proposed boundary map in March and an updated map in April — a departure from the 2022 meetings, when there were multiple boundary map scenarios up for discussion at any given time, with color-coded names.
When asked by The Ledger why only one map will be discussed at a time, Schuch said:
What we’re envisioning now is having one scenario with our best thinking. In part because with those layers — with the elementary, middle and high school layers — it can get pretty confusing if we have multiple drafts with multiple layers. But again, that doesn’t mean we can’t make tweaks to that based on our best thinking. We’re running as many options as we have right now, that we can think of, so that we are prepared if people say, ‘what if you make this tweak?’ we’ve already run that and so we have that available, and we can argue why it did or didn’t work according to the board’s priorities.
It still doesn’t mean that we have decided things at all. We are really curious to hear from people what they think of that initial draft, and we are very much open to making any kind of tweaks that people are suggesting and running additional scenarios.
🏫 Providence High is in the discussion for boundary changes. The initial proposed scenarios last year mostly called for Providence High’s boundaries to stay intact, with CMS officials saying that Providence was at capacity and didn’t need to be brought into boundary changes.
But families with students at Myers Park High who under some scenarios last year would have moved to South Meck asked CMS to consider changing Providence High’s boundaries, because they said their homes are closer to Providence than South Meck.
Schuch told reporters Tuesday that changing the boundaries of Providence High “is definitely an option. It’s something that we’ve been requested to take a look at. It’s not a definite at the moment, but we are considering that as part of the broader picture.”
🏫 Look for lots of questions about will happen to high school juniors. Parents were vocal at last year’s community meetings about concerns for students who will be high school juniors when the new boundary lines go into effect. (These are students who are now high school freshmen.)
Junior year is typically a high-intensity year for students aiming to head to college after graduation, and many parents spoke out to request that juniors be allowed to stay in their current schools for junior and senior years.
CMS officials have said that as new high schools are opened, only seniors are typically “grandfathered” to allow them to stay at their current school, and that providing the additional transportation needed to accommodate upperclassmen over two years would put a strain on an already taxed CMS transportation department. But they told families last year that they’d take the request into consideration.
🏫 Don’t expect too many details about the new high school just yet. Here’s what we do know about the new high school that’s under construction at Johnston and Community House roads: It will have 100 classrooms and accommodate 2,200 to 2,500 students.
(Extremely overcrowded Ardrey Kell, by comparison, has about 3,700 students and is currently the biggest high school in North Carolina, said CMS Chief Operations Officer Brian Schultz.)
Decisions about what specific courses will be offered at the new school will be made after decisions about boundaries are finalized and a principal and leadership team are hired, Schuch said.
“We do want to make sure that both the standards of the courses and the type of courses — if you’re on a certain track you can continue with that,” she said. “If you’re at South Meck and you’re taking a lot of APs, for instance, you can continue to take those” if moving to the new high school.
🏫 Parents are gearing up. More than 60 people including CMS staff and a few members of the media attended a noon community Zoom meeting Tuesday, during which CMS staff laid out the timeline for community involvement and decision making.
Joanna Feltovich, a mother who has children in the International Baccalaureate program at Randolph Middle School, logged in to hear the update. She said during a breakout session that she’s concerned about the speed in which decisions will be made this spring, and she worries what will happen to plans for the new middle school — and all the elementary and middle school boundary decisions that will be made this spring — if voters turn down a bond in November.
The boundary process “seemed to drag its heels, and now all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Nope, now we gotta go,’” she said.
Want to know more?
CMS officials are updating this website as they roll out information about the new high school and boundary plans. Here is the schedule of upcoming public meetings CMS leaders are holding to get feedback on proposed boundaries:
Phase II “reset” session (no boundary scenarios will be shared):
- Tonight, 6:30 p.m. at Myers Park High School
Phase II Draft I Scenarios:
- March 27, 6:30 p.m. at Myers Park High School
- March 29, 6:30 p.m. at South Meck High School
- March 30, 12 p.m. on Zoom
Phase II Draft II Scenarios:
- April 19, 6:30 p.m. at Ardrey Kell High School
- April 20, 12 p.m. on Zoom
- April 20, 6:30 p.m. at Providence High School
- April 21, 12 p.m. on Zoom
CMS school board public hearing and vote:
- May 9, 6 p.m. public hearing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center
- May 23, 6 p.m. board vote, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
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