|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Jones Dairy will go year-round
by Suzanne Rook, Wake Weekly Associate Editor
The phone calls and questions have already begun. Parents want to know what the conversion of Jones Dairy Elementary means for local children.
Dr. Ramey Beavers, director of the school system's division of growth management, has several ideas, but few definitive answers. A meeting with the board set for next week, he said, will give him a better sense of what next year's student assignment proposal will look like. After the Wake County school board last week agreed to return the school to a year-round calendar, questions were bound to arise. Jones Dairy opened in 1996 as a year-round school. In January, its population was permanently transferred to the new Heritage Elementary. In turn, Wake Forest Elementary staff and students moved into Jones Dairy while their campus is being renovated. They are set to return by Aug. 2004. The proposal OK'd by the board will move students from Durant and Heritage elementaries to fill Jones Dairy next fall. Next week, Beavers says he'll discuss with board members a plan in which students currently attending traditional schools will be assigned to those year-rounds. The board has indicated such students should be high-needs students. "The time to do that is when you open a school," said Beavers. The moves, the board says, would reduce crowding and make year-round schools more closely reflect the demographic makeup of the traditional schools in their area. Typically, year-round schools are filled with affluent white students. In the 2001-02 school year, only 10 percent of Jones Dairy's students were from low income families. Durant Elementary had 11 percent. By contrast, Wake Forest Elementary had 33 percent low income students; Rolesville Elementary had 36 percent. Studies have shown that low income students often have more difficulty in school. The upcoming moves to and within year-round schools is seen by the system as a way to equalize schools. Plan to come Reports are that as many as 10,000 students will be moved in the 2004-05 assignment plan. Beavers won't discuss a figure, but said the number of children moved this year may look larger due to the opening of seven schools and the inclusion of year-round students in the plan. Approximately 600 kindergarten through fifth-grade students will be needed to fill Jones Dairy, he said. Year-round schools have four groups, or tracks, of students attending classes for nine weeks at a time followed by three-week breaks. Such schools can hold an estimated 20 percent more students. By assigning just 600, Beavers said the school will have room to grow. Opening Jones Dairy will help alleviate overcrowding at nearby traditional schools. While those schools haven't been determined, Beavers pointed to the overcrowding at Wake Forest, Rolesville and Fox Road elementaries. And when Wake Forest Elementary returns to its campus, it will have fewer classrooms than when staff and students departed. An entire building has been demolished, and classrooms inside the 1930's-era Forrest building were enlarged to meet current building codes. The new assignment plan won't be released until late December or early January. The public will be invited to comment on the proposal before it is presented to the board, possibly in February.
Last Updated On: October 16, 2003
Copyright 2003 The Wake Weekly