Emotional meeting Tuesday brought high school parents before the school board.
NEW HANOVER COUNTY -- Each day Angela Davis drives her daughter to New Hanover High School, about 3 miles from their Shipyard Boulevard home. If current redistricting plans move forward, next year she'll have a longer trip.
"She would be going to Ashley, which is 8.3 miles away from my home," Davis said Tuesday during a New Hanover County School Board meeting. "I do know they offer ... school buses. My particular situation, that's not an option -- there's a registered sex offender in my neighborhood. I cannot leave my daughter at the end of my driveway."
Tuesday was a chance for parents to speak directly to board members about New Hanover County Schools' proposal for high school redistricting, which would this year move 685 students, or 9 percent of high-schoolers. Redistricting was triggered by overcrowding at Laney High School, which this year is 602 students over capacity.
If the first weeks of the redistricting process were about numbers, Tuesday was about feelings: parental anger at buying a house only to have their children's school switched; students' fears about making new friends if they are transferred; long-seething frustration over diversity in the schools.
Concerns for NHHS
Many parents spoke Tuesday about how the plan would affect New Hanover High School (NHHS) in downtown Wilmington.
Even before the meeting, school officials recieved 186 comments about the proposed high school maps. Nearly a third of comments touched on three concerns: whether the maps would concentrate low-income students at NHHS; moving the Forest Hills and Glen Meade neighborhoods away from NHHS; and if the maps would put students from rival gangs in the same classroom.
Early numbers showed the plan could grow the proportion of NHHS students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. But Assistant Superintendent Eddie Anderson said it is incorrect to compare current numbers of low-income students with future estimates.
Though district data estimate 38 percent of NHHS students are free/reduced lunch-eligible, it's likely closer to 50 percent. That's because for two years, NHHS has been a Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) school in which all students are automatically eligible. That means the district no longer has to collect lunch applications, and its count of 38 percent misses some students.
"We estimate if the plan is adopted that the new percentage would be about 46 percent, which is more in line with what it's been," Anderson said.
Board members seemed in favor leaving Forest Hills and Glen Meade with NHHS, though that could require them to move the southern boundary of the Hoggard High district further into Ashley's zone. And after meeting the New Hanvoer County Sheriff's Office's Gang Task Force, school leaders determined the maps do not create problems with rival gangs.
"If we make any changes here tonight or in the future, we can meet with them again," Anderson said.
Parents speak out
More than a dozen signed up to speak during the emotional meeting. A few parents, including NHHS mother Gina Fimbel, chastised the board for racial and socio-economic imbalances in downtown schools.
"We are a community of de facto segregation," she said. "The current redistricting plan would only further segregate our community by racial and economic lines."
When Fimbel continued beyond her three-minute speaking time, she sparred verbally with board chairman Ed Higgins, who at one point called a sheriff's deputy to encourage Fimbel to give up the podium.
"No sir, you will not shut me up," she shot back. "I sat here listening to you for an hour."
Other parents asked why the affluent Landfall community, districted to Laney, was not moved to NHHS with other neighborhoods along Military Cutoff Road. Superintendent Tim Markley said the redistricting committee considered moving Landfall, but also had to plan for the RiverLights community adding students over the next five years. That neighborhood -- under construction along River Road -- falls within the NHHS district.
Each of the board's seven members took time to reassure parents that they are listening, and are prepared to rethink the maps.
"When I read the emails, it was so hard, because I realize we started with a computer that generated a map, and now we've got people that are telling us how it's going to impact them and their children," Vice Chairwoman Jeannette Nichols said.
"We realize that we're moving small amounts of students," member Lisa Estep said. "But they're your students, so it means a lot to you. And it means a lot to us to get feedback."
Reporter Cammie Bellamy can be reached at 910-343-2339 or Cammie.Belllamy@StarNewsOnline.com.