Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Year round schools in Raleigh
Wake county has finally bit the bullet and taken the easy way out and gone with a short term fix for school overcrowding....year round schools. The school board has decided that 23 elementary schools and, possibly, some number of middle schools will go year round. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not really against year round schools. As a parent there are a lot things I like about year round. BUT, there are other issues here. I'll list them:
1) We just don't have enough good teachers as it is. Year round schools don't solve this. You still need teachers. My concern is that this is going to make it harder to keep the good teachers in the Wake County School district. I don't think all of them will leave, but some will not want to deal with the hassle of having their high school kid on a different schedule (I know I wouldn't) or packing up their stuff every 9 weeks to move to a different class, etc.
2) What if you have a kid in elementary or middle school and one in high school? Now they are on completely different schedules. The parents that can afford it are going to go to private schools. This will perpetuate the flight of the well-to-do away from public schools.
3) This is a short term fix. The Wake/Raleigh school planners need to get their act together. Stop building palatial 500-600 kid elementary schools and start building reasonable 1000 kid elementary schools. They keep talking like this is rocket science, but it really isn't. The planners just aren't very smart.
Raleigh has a history of good schools. I hope I'm wrong and that this isn't the start of the decline.
1) We just don't have enough good teachers as it is. Year round schools don't solve this. You still need teachers. My concern is that this is going to make it harder to keep the good teachers in the Wake County School district. I don't think all of them will leave, but some will not want to deal with the hassle of having their high school kid on a different schedule (I know I wouldn't) or packing up their stuff every 9 weeks to move to a different class, etc.
2) What if you have a kid in elementary or middle school and one in high school? Now they are on completely different schedules. The parents that can afford it are going to go to private schools. This will perpetuate the flight of the well-to-do away from public schools.
3) This is a short term fix. The Wake/Raleigh school planners need to get their act together. Stop building palatial 500-600 kid elementary schools and start building reasonable 1000 kid elementary schools. They keep talking like this is rocket science, but it really isn't. The planners just aren't very smart.
Raleigh has a history of good schools. I hope I'm wrong and that this isn't the start of the decline.
