This is the first of a two part series on the WCPSS and the just passed bond referendum. This is the type of analysis of the bond vote and the back issues motivating the voters that the Cary News refuses to print. Consequently, the refusal of the media to actually do it's job, ie, be the investigatory apparatus keeping voters informed and government honest, is part of the reason the problem of school overcrowding exists. It is also part of the reason the bond referendum passed. If the voters understood the reasons why the WCPSS is in the situation it is in and who put the system in that predicament the incumbents on the Wake County Commmission up for re-election on election day would have all lost.
Current population growth rates in Wake County continue to add more school aged children than the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) can accommodate with existing infrastructure. The WCPSS has responded to the challenge by utilizing trailers as temporary classroom space, numerous reassignment schemes, and converting schools from a traditional calendar to a year round calendar in order to maximize space utilization. While the Board of Education (BoE) is charged by law with oversight and control of the WCPSS, the Wake County Commission (WCC) is the entity which sets the tax rate and funds the BoE and the WCPSS. This split in responsibilities has resulted in political dissension between the two bodies: the BoE demands increases in funding that the WCC is unwilling to accommodate. With this tension ongoing; the WCC continues to fund expensive and non-critical capital projects outside of the WCPSS. Exacerbating it all is the annual school reassignment ritual. This year school reassignments faded as a source of controversy as a proposed mandatory year round conversion plan drew the ire of parents across the county.
Caught in between the two groups of politicians on the BoE and the WCC are the children and parents. These parents; anxious over the quality of the education their children will receive in crowded schools, angry that their child has to be bused long distances, facing conflicting schedules between haphazard conversions to year round calendars among elementary and middle schools, and not trusting the bureaucracy are stuck looking for alternatives. The risk created by the these two groups threatens to leave Wake County with a Public School System lacking broad public support and missing many of the academically high achieving students who have exited it.
Evidence of the numerous scandals, political turf fights, and misplaced priorities that have led to the current problem abound. What is lacking, however, is any attempt to demonstrate that these are the root and cause of the problems facing the WCPSS and will remain in spite of the approval of the Bond referendum this past election. The failure to properly forecast student enrollment growth, to plan for that growth, to prioritize spending to accommodate that growth, and the will to execute a plan to stay ahead of it has been evident over the past decade. The words and deeds of the BoE and the WCC combine to create a well of dissatisfaction and mistrust played out in Letters to the Editor, at BoE and WCC meetings, and at the ballot box.
In 1996, the percentage of school aged children enrolled in the public school system was at 90%. Ten years later, in 2006, that number had dropped a staggering 7%, down to 83%. This occurred in spite of annual rate of population growth of school aged children in excess of 3% per year. What was in 1995-1996 a total of 9,000 children outside the WCPSS, is now well over 23,000 in 2005-2006. Data gathered from the Wake County Public Schools Demographics Resource Center shows this change occurred in the face of student enrollment growth from 81,203 students in the 1995-1996 school year to 114,068 students in the 2004-2005 school year. Over the course of these years, home schooling has grown, Charter schools have begun operation, and numerous private schools have opened in Wake County, from exclusive, non-sectarian institutions such as Cary Academy, to more modest Roman Catholic parochial schools such as St Michael’s and the non-denominational Cary Christian Academy. As private schools come on line in the County, enrollment in the Public School System decreases, not in a smooth, sloped trend, but as steps on a stair. While one year may show a tenth or two tenths of a percentage gain in enrollment in the public schools, these demographic hiccups are quickly reversed with the opening of more private schools. As the percentage of school aged children enrolled in the WCPSS decreases over time, support for it is eroded. Evidence from other school districts suggests that when the percentage of school aged children enrolled in the public schools dips below 70%, bond referendums simply lack the support needed to pass.
First, the WCC spends tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis for items unrelated to the WCPSS. The County Commission routinely funds non-essential projects directly, leaving essential expenditures such as facilities construction for the Sheriff’s office, the WCPSS, the County Courts, and other matters unfunded until the voters approve a bond package. The voters hear the political rhetoric but see governmental actions at odds with those words. It is difficult for voters to synchronize the claims for the importance of the Bond referendum while the WCC has authorized hundreds of millions of dollars spent on everything but school construction. A demonstration of this was seen in a political attack this past election made by the Chair of the Wake County Democratic Party, Keith Karlsson, against WCC candidate Paul Coble, when he savaged Coble for not voting for ESA funding when he was Mayor of Raleigh. What are the voters to think? Having a championship hockey team is worth more than funding the WCPSS? What does this say of Karlsson’s priorities? Did the voters notice they were forced to vote on school bonds but were denied the chance to vote on any of the numerous non-critical projects that drain tax money that should have been spent on the WCPSS?
Second, the BoE successfully managed to prevent an outside audit of its internal books for several years. When an independent audit was finally forced upon the WCPSS, $4 million was determined to have been misappropriated from the Transportation Department. The spectacle of WCPSS employees being convicted and sentenced to State Prison for their roles in the theft of the $4 million at the same time that members of the BoE insist the WCC raise taxes to fund a bond issue of $970 million dollars has shaken public confidence in the fiscal integrity of the bureaucracy.
Third, in trying to accommodate increasing absolute numbers of students each year the WCPSS has utilized the practice of reassigning “nodes”, or fractions of zip codes, to schools with the capacity to accommodate the number of students theoretically within that node. The practice has caused many families to undergo reassignment to different elementary and middle schools as often as once every two years. Bus rides of over 10 miles from home to school are becoming increasingly more common.
Fourth, mandatory conversion of schools to a year round calendar is one method of accommodating more students in the same school. The mandatory conversion has generated a significant backlash among parents who, because of the already prevalent practice of reassignment may have a child on a traditional calendar in an elementary school miles from home and a second child in a year round middle school located in the opposite direction as far, or farther than the first. The uncertainty of annual school assignments has been compounded by the uncertainty of synchronized calendars for school breaks. This has led to the creation off parents groups organized to combat what they view as an unresponsive and hostile bureaucracy. What does this say about the matter of trust and accountability when parents are so aggrieved at the way their elected BoE members deal with them that they organize like this?
These four situations continue to fester independent of one another. Voters who tied them all together tended to vote “NO” on the recent bond referendum. Of those who did vote for the successful bond question, many, as noted by the News and Observer the day after the election, voted in spite of serious misgivings about the competency of the politicians and bureaucrats into whose hands they were voting to place the $970 million. What is unfortunate, however, is that the news media has done little investigative work to illustrate the high levels of voter distrust and apprehension about the actions and motives of the BoE and the WCC members. That distrust was apparent in the race of WCC member Tony Gurley who barely won against a lackluster opponent who failed to raise the $3,000 necessary to trigger a financial report to the Board of Elections.
The WCPSS’s own statistics demonstrate a massive loss of public confidence. When parents feel victimized and impotent in the face of what they perceive to be a hostile bureaucracy, they leave if they can. Significantly, what could also be asked is: “What percentage of families left within the system would leave if that option were financially or otherwise viable for them?” It would be difficult to imagine any of the elected members on the BoE or the WCC stating that their course of action was selected specifically to cause dissatisfaction with the WCPSS and offend as many voters as possible. While past results are no guarantee of future performance, they are generally a reasonable predictor. With that, it is difficult for many voters to believe the politicians and processes we now have can yield results different from what we’ve already been treated to. School overcrowding, mismanagement of resources, poor planning, weak budgetary controls, and parental discontent remain the prescription for the WCPSS.
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