Civil rights, school choice and closing plans

Tuesday's report on some of the first-year results of the 2011-12 Charlotte-Mecklenburg school closings is bound to provide fodder for some lively discussions around town this week.  Here are some of my observations:

* The report reminded me that several complaints were filed with the U.S. Education Department's office for  civil rights,  alleging that the closings discriminated on the basis of race and national origin.  A spokesman told me Tuesday that the case remains under investigation.  The department doesn't discuss ongoing investigations,  but offers this general information about how complaints are handled.

* CMS officials say one reason that enrollment outstripped projections at the new preK-8 schools is that the closings eliminated  "Title I choice"  for some families.  No Child Left Behind guaranteed the chance for students to opt out of some high-poverty,  low-performing schools,  including the closed Spaugh, Wilson and Williams middle schools.  But they didn't get that option at some of the preK-8s.  In 2013-14,  that opt-out guarantee vanishes in all schools because North Carolina got a waiver from No Child Left Behind.  That's likely to cause serious consternation in neighborhoods where the assigned school is considered unacceptable.

* Superintendent Heath Morrison says some of the questions and resistance to the closings,  which were approved after nine months of talks in 2010,  arose because CMS has no policy on closing schools.  He said he plans to bring a proposal to the board soon,  at a time when there's little likelihood it will be needed,  so the board and staff can plan a process without being under pressure.

* There was quite a bit of talk about expanding the combined elementary/middle model.  Morrison says he likes it in general because research shows transitions can create academic loss.  Board member Rhonda Lennon said Mountain Island Elementary in her district is eager to add grades 6-8.

* Are any other old-timers amused to see all the underfilled schools listed in the report?  (See pages 7 and 12.)  In past years, when CMS was trying to pass bonds for construction and renovation,  leaders took umbrage at talk of half-empty urban schools,  insisting that was a myth.  Now that there's a new crew looking at the cost-effectiveness of closing urban schools,  it appears there were plenty of unused classrooms.

* I think Morrison and Chief Accountability Officer Frank Barnes are wise in cautioning against trying to draw quick conclusions about what caused gains and losses.  But it is interesting to note that Reid Park,  which saw the biggest academic setbacks,  also got walloped by the biggest unanticipated surge of students last year.  The report shows Reid Park Elementary was 89 percent full with 434 students in 2010-11.  Reid Park PreK-8 was projected to have 536 students last year.  Instead it ended up with 714, and had to bring in 15 mobile classrooms.  That jibes with what Principal Mary Sturge told me in August,  when she talked about the difficulty of finding good teachers after classes began.

* I give Morrison and his crew props for crunching a lot of data and trying to make it clear and meaningful.  Barnes noted that the comparison of Harding's academic results in 2010-11 and 2011-12 didn't mean a lot,  since the student body had changed so much.  He's right.  But if CMS wanted to get some gauge on whether students were helped or harmed by the Harding-Waddell merger,  it would have been more enlightening to compare Harding's 2011-12 IB magnet students with the same magnet the prior year,  and to compare Harding's 2011-12 neighborhood students with Waddell's performance.

What are the rest of you thinking?