Clarity in CMS boundary skirmishes?

Superintendent Heath Morrison will get a live demonstration of one of the sources of frustration with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools next week.

Jeremy Stephenson and his neighbors from the Crown Colony neighborhood in southeast Charlotte will come to the school board to make their case for being rezoned from East Meck to Providence High School,  which is closer  (click here for a map of the neighborhood and the two schools).  They'll talk about how the number of students is so small it won't make a difference to either school,  and how no one can give them a clear explanation of a boundary drawn many years earlier.

The board will listen without comment or reactions,  standard procedure for public comment time.  Later in the meeting,  they'll hear a staff update on student assignment that will focus on the boundaries for a new elementary school opening in 2013-14.  Almost certainly,  the board won't take up the Crown Colony question,  and the families who want a response before the Nov. 15 deadline for 2013-14 boundary changes will leave angry.

To longtime CMS-watchers,  this is a familiar dance.  The board and planning staff hold a hard line on boundaries,  lest they by nibbled to death by time-consuming and emotional pleas to move the lines one neighborhood at a time.  Families who believe they've got a logical case feel like they're batted between staff and board members,  with no one giving a better answer than,  "That's the way it is."  The subtext is inevitably the quest to get into  "better"  schools,  and all the racial and class tension that carries with it.  I've never seen families push to get zoned for a closer school with higher poverty levels and/or lower academic results.

Let's be clear:  None of this is unique to CMS.  Boundary battles are universal in public education,  though the fact that CMS encompasses a mix of urban,  suburban and so-called middle-ring schools may intensify the jostling.

After a long and difficult student assignment review in 2010,  the board adopted a set of guiding principles that say the board will consider a districtwide review every six years.  Parents like Stephenson counter that nothing in those principles eliminates the possibility of smaller changes between reviews.

Morrison took the corner office at CMS this summer,  and is scoping the scene before crafting his long-term plan.  He has repeatedly said one of CMS'  problems is a lack of clear processes for difficult decisions.  Spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry says Morrison has been asking staff and board members how neighborhood rezoning requests are handled,  and he'd like to be able to give better answers than people get now.  "It is a healthy conversation to have,"  she said.

But next week,  she said,  is probably too early to have it.