School Boundaries Survey
Do you favor redrawing school boundary lines?
In addition to the CMS student assignment survey, The Council for Children's Rights is asking members of the community for their opinions on redrawing school attendance boundaries for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The survey is quick, only four questions, with the last question being to the point: Why do you or do you not think redrawing of school boundary lines is a good idea?
CMS has several magnet school choices for children, but there are families who speicifically moved to a neighborhood for the neighborhood school. Redrawing school boundaries could upset these neighborhood school assignments, thus one reason why it's a hot topic right now throughout the CMS parent community. It also drew heated debate amongst the school board at its last board meeting. Not only is the community divided, it seems the board is too.
Big questions loom. How do we make sure all students attending CMS schools are getting the best resources and education possible? Will balancing racial and socioeconomic populations in schools help keep a more even playing field? And if so, how do we do it that doesn't overly affect the students that would be shuffled?
Council for Children's Rights survey is simply a gathering of thoughts from the community at large. Emily Tamilin, director of research and public policy for Council for Children's Rights sees the survey as an anonymous way for people to state why or why they don't like the idea of redrawn school assignment boundaries.
"We are just trying to understand what people think about the redrawing school boundaries, the consequences of which reach beyond just student makeup," says Tamilin.
Data collected from the Council for Children's Rights survey will be analyzed to see if there are repeated themes in the collected comments that the organization can then use in how it advocates for the community with the school board and other education partners, such as Meck Ed or UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.
The CMS survey is still open for parents and community members to take. The data from the CMS survey is for use by the school board as it makes decisions on redrawing boundary lines or other options to balancing school populations.
