School assignment madness

Two miles or two hundred feet?

You want to know how messed up the proposed 2013-2014 Wake County school assignments are? Above is a photo of our kids’ school, Conn Elementary. Highlighted in red is the long-time home of Mrs. Williams at 300 Plainview Avenue in the Belvidere Park neighborhood.

As you can see, Mrs. Williams’s property is actually adjacent to Conn Elementary. The neighborhood crosswalk for Conn runs right in front of her property. From her back porch she could honestly throw a rock and hit the school (provided of course that Principal Richburg isn’t around).

In light of this, you’d think this address would be a sure thing for a Conn assignment but you’d be wrong. Under the proposed assignments, the students living at this address will instead be driven or bused to Joyner Elementary over on Noble Road.

Now, I’m not knocking Joyner at all. In fact I think Joyner is an outstanding school. I really do. It just happens to be two miles farther away than Conn: the school that traditionally has served this neighborhood. What kind of sense does this make?

Conn is a wonderfully diverse school in a wonderfully diverse neighborhood. It’s got the best of both worlds: it’s diverse and it’s a neighborhood school. I’m trying to figure out what problem is being solved by this proposed new assignment plan with regards to Conn. Can somebody help me out?