Winners and losers in CMS lottery

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' beefed-up menu of options for 2014-15 drew more than 24,000 students for the first lottery,  with 20,287 of them getting assignments at requested schools,  newly posted lottery results show.

The report shows some new offerings,  such as a high school on the UNC Charlotte campus and tech-oriented magnets for lower grades,  opening with strong interest.  Many perennial favorites remain popular.  But enrollment continues to slump at some struggling magnets,  such as Marie G. Davis Military/Leadership Academy and Harding High's IB program.  And it looks like some new programs,  including a middle college high at CPCC's Harper campus and a Montessori school at Long Creek,  will have to keep recruiting to be ready to open in August.

Morehead STEM remains popular

Before the details,  a caution:  A lot can change between now and August.  Many families apply for CMS magnets,  charter schools and/or private schools to see what their options are before making a decision.  Some students who got seats in magnets may fail to meet the admission requirements.  CMS will keep recruiting for underfilled programs.  We'll hear more about upcoming plans at a Wednesday news conference.

Here's what strikes me looking at the list  (find CMS lottery results for the last five years here and check the CMS plans for new options here).

Cotswold Elementary's IB magnet appears to be the toughest to get into,  with 238 waiting for only 190 seats that were filled.  Morehead STEM, a K-8 magnet,  has the longest waiting list,  with 668 waiting and 1,180 seated.

The new early college high based at UNCC's energy and engineering center had originally planned to open with 65 ninth-graders in August.  Instead CMS placed 100 ninth-graders,  with 94 on the waiting list.  Students will be able to attend up to five years of high school and receive two years of tuition-free college credit along with their diplomas.

Students will have a similar option at three middle college high schools at Central Piedmont Community College,  although these schools are open only to 11th- and 12th-graders.  Cato,  the model for the two new clones,  filled 220 seats with nine students waiting. But only 14 were seated at Harper Middle College and 55 at Levine Middle College.

A new health sciences magnet at Hawthorne High pulled 87 students.  CMS had hoped to have about 250 students at Hawthorne,  which is transitioning from an alternative school to a magnet,  but the current list shows only about 160 including the nonmagnet students.

A STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) magnet in the new elementary school opening in the southwest Pallisades area filled its 150 seats and has 63 waiting.

Cochrane Middle School's new iMeck Academy drew 152 students, and McClintock Middle's new STEAM Academy  (that's STEM plus arts)  pulled 107. Coulwood's new STEM magnet, which was created partly to offset the loss of sixth-graders who will stay at Mountain Island Elementary as it becomes a K-8 school,  drew only 38 sixth-graders. CMS had hoped for 150.

One has to wonder:  Has the high-tech craze sapped enthusiasm for other options?

CMS'  existing Montessori schools drew hefty waiting lists,  as usual.  The new Long Creek Montessori,  opening as a separate school next to the neighborhood elementary on the same Huntersville property,  drew 50 prekindergarteners and 37 kindergarteners,  but only five students for grades 1-3  (oddly,  the list says there's one first-grader placed and five on the waiting list).

Northwest School of the Arts, a 6-12 magnet with a long tradition and national reputation, slipped in this year's lottery.  Only 48 sixth-graders applied,  down from 99 last year,  with the total seated slipping from 941 to 854. Update: Student placement director Scott McCully says there's no decline in applications. Students who apply must audition to be admitted, he said, and that has gone more slowly than in past years. Once applicants complete their auditions, he said, the number of sixth-graders will rise.

The  "hub"  plan for high school students to transfer into North Mecklenburg High for career-tech programs didn't get much interest. Seven each applied for seats in the cosmetology and culinary arts programs, two for automotive, one for horticulture and none for carpentry.

Marie G. Davis Military/Leadership Academy, a K-12 magnet that has long struggled to attract students to the school south of uptown Charlotte, had 701 students seated,  down from 847 in last year's lottery. Only 12 kindergarteners and 39 first-graders applied,  compared with 34 kindergarteners and 82 first-graders last year.

East Meck now has the largest high school IB magnet with 1,009, up from 845 in last year's first lottery. North Meck is second at 615, also up slightly. Harding's IB magnet,  which has been struggling since CMS ended the westside school's full-magnet status in 2011,  drew 297 students,  down from 393 last spring and 744 in 2010.  West Charlotte IB is holding steady with 231.

Myers Park High still has an IB program, but since it stopped taking students from outside the attendance zone it isn't part of the lottery.  Likewise,  there's no listing for Olympic's new Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship school because it's an internal assignment for students living in the Olympic zone.

As noted,  we'll have a chance to hear more from CMS officials on Wednesday,  so if you see interesting patterns or have questions,  please post them.

Should CMS create an all-male school?

An all-male school to help African American boys excel, stronger offerings for gifted middle-school students and more STEM, language and Montessori magnets in the suburbs are likely to be among the suggestions we'll see this month when 22 task forces publish their advice for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Superintendent Heath Morrison created the panels,  made up of employees, students and citizen volunteers,  in November,  when he unveiled  "The Way Forward."  Those groups recently wrapped up their study,  and Morrison said he expects to publish the reports and start discussing them with the school board in July.

My predictions come not from a crystal ball but from minutes filed on the task force web site.  Those minutes,  prepared in a standard format by CMS staff,  don't give much away,  so I'm sure there will be surprises when the full reports come out.

For Morrison and the board,  the next step will be sorting out the long list of recommendations:  What can be done quickly?  What needs to be part of a long-term strategy?  What's just not practical?  The next phase  could be a turning point in Morrison's leadership.  Lots of people stepped up to serve on task forces.  If they think their work ends up sitting on a shelf,  they could grow disillusioned.  If they see results,  enthusiasm could build.

Traditionally,  CMS advisory boards have also been a training ground for school board candidates.  Filing for the six district seats opens Friday;  we'll see how many task force members put their names in.

As Morrison marks the end of his first year,  I'm trying to get updates on the biggest efforts he has talked about or launched so far.  Morrison's staff is getting answers to several items I've asked about.  Let me know what you're thinking;  I may have left some out.

East Meck: Not so dinky

It was just about a year ago that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board kicked off months of melodrama by launching a last-ditch effort to find more students for East Mecklenburg High in 2010-11.

Members had just approved controversial boundaries for the new Rocky River High, and projections called for East to shrink from 2,100 to roughly 1,400 this year, when the new boundaries take effect. The fear was that East Meck would lose academic ground and community support if it lost too many students and teachers. The board ended up shuffling boundaries for International Baccalaureate magnet programs at East, Myers Park and Harding.

As the start of school approaches, CMS projections call for East to have 1,836 students, including 745 in the magnet. If those numbers materialize (official tallies are taken in September), East will have the district's largest high-school IB program, with Harding second at 731. Other IB magnet numbers as of CMS's second lottery are 476 at North Meck; 335 at Myers Park, which lost the ability to take magnet students from outside its zone; and 159 at West Charlotte, says Magnet Director Jeff Linker.

Kim Lanphear, one of the parent leaders of Myers Park's IB program, says the school hated to lose its out-of-zone students, but the program is expected to thrive. Students who aren't officially part of the IB program can get permission to take some IB classes.

Harding faces the greatest uncertainty. As a full magnet (IB is combined with math/science), it's one of four high schools that lost neighborhood busing. The school is already down from a peak enrollment of more than 1,440 a few years ago to just over 1,000, thanks partly to academic admission requirements added in recent years. If more families pull out because they can't get their kids to and from school or shuttle stops, Harding could shrink further.

A few other magnet updates, courtesy of Linker: First Ward Elementary, which is picking up the arts magnet that used to be at Dilworth, is expected to have 625 students. Linker says most of the Dilworth students and faculty moved to First Ward, and some extra students were admitted because the building is bigger.

The math/science magnet at Morehead and the Spanish-immersion magnets at Collinswood and Oaklawn will have their first sixth-graders this year; all were formerly elementary schools. Sedgefield Middle will debut a seventh-grade Montessori magnet class of 20 to 25 students (moving up from Park Road and Highland Mills, which added sixth-graders last year).

And the Military and Global Leadership Academy at Marie G. Davis will have its first graduating class this year. There are only about a dozen seniors, Linker says, and the school remains short of its goal of 100 students per grade level. But Linker says the lower grades of the combined middle/high school are starting to get close.

Computerized car-pooling

As thousands of Charlotte-Mecklenburg magnet families figure out how to cope with the loss of neighborhood bus service in August, parents at Northwest School of the Arts think they've found an answer: Paying for an online carpool-coordination service.

When the school board voted to cut busing, district officials suggested families could carpool their kids to and from the new "shuttle stops" that could be miles from their homes. But when you've got more than 1,000 kids scattered over 545 square miles of Mecklenburg County, lining up connections becomes a gargantuan task.

Carolyn Allison with Northwest's PTSA researched three Web sites that offer carpool coordination.

The group's leaders settled on Carpool To School because it offers the most automation and demands the least work from volunteer coordinators, says PTSA President Ginny Brien.

"It's so automated that when it's your turn to drive, you can get an e-mail reminder," she says.

There's a start-up fee of about $1,000, plus $60 a month, for a cost of just over $1,700 a year. But Brien and her crew think that's worth it to preserve students' access to a specialized school they love.

"If we lose a significant number of students it could kill the program," she says, but adds that Northwest has a strong waiting list to pull from.

Ten other magnets are in a similar situation, and Brien suggests their parent groups look into similar options. She suggests checking the Carpool To School link for details; if there are still questions, you can get her e-mail from the Northwest PTSA site.

Meanwhile, CMS has asked parents to notify them by July 22 if they need to withdraw students from any of the magnets because of transportation problems. It's not a rock-hard deadline; students can return to their neighborhood school at any time. But that should give some gauge of how hard the busing changes are hitting families and schools.