Flying Blind: Waddell Spared, Harding Axed
Alternate Headline: Making Stuff Up As They Go Along.
Seriously, how else to explain the eleventh-hour, complete about-face Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is pulling with the latest revision to its ongoing Case for Continuous Upheaval?
Schools Chief Peter Gorman and top CMS staff now say they plan to close Harding High School, instead of Waddell. The details from the district’s media release, hot from CMS’ multi-million-dollar PR machine:
Under the proposed change, E.E. Waddell High School would remain open and the partial International Baccalaureate (IB) magnet program now at Harding University High School would move to Waddell. Harding would close as a high school and its campus would become home to the K-8 language immersion magnet program now located at Smith Academy of International Languages. An earlier proposal recommended that Smith Academy be relocated to E.E. Waddell, which would have been closed as a high school. The math and science program at Harding would close and a math and science program will open at Phillip O. Berry Academy High School.
South Mecklenburg and West Mecklenburg high schools now would not be affected by any of the proposed changes. Previously, South Mecklenburg was to receive some students from Waddell, while Harding was to receive some students from West Mecklenburg.
Under the proposed changes, students at Harding would have the opportunity to continue in partial IB, go to the math and science program at Philip O. Berry, or to attend their assigned home school. The new recommendation would allow Waddell students to attend their assigned home school, which is consistent with the guiding principles adopted by the Board of Education as part of its comprehensive review of schools.
And you absolutely have to love the timing of the latest twist: the change was announced hours before a community forum scheduled tonight at South Mecklenburg High School, which would have received students from shuttered Waddell under the previous plan. An additional, last-minute community forum for Harding folks has been scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Harding High School.
The school board is slated to vote Nov. 9 on the recommended changes, leaving precious little time for its members to absorb the impact of the latest changes. Just, I suspect, as CMS brass intended.
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