Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Crystal Hill outlined a plan Tuesday that will create opportunities for about 800 more students to choose college-based high schools in 2025-26.
It also switches the neighborhood school assignments for about 800 students, as CMS relocates magnet programs, converts Davidson K-8 to an elementary school and merges two underfilled elementary schools. That’s less than 1% of total enrollment.
A deeper dive into student assignment, including a review of magnet programs, career-tech options, demographics and enrollment projections, will take place from September to March, according to Tuesday’s report.
Some of the current changes come as no surprise because they were part of the $2.5 billion bond package that voters approved in 2023. Others are designed to create academic opportunities that could help CMS retain students in an increasingly competitive environment.
“I believe that a lot of people will raise their hands and say yes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools who currently aren’t saying yes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, because this is an added opportunity for students,” Hill said of the early-college high school expansion.
CMS has already been discussing the proposed changes for 2025-26 at meetings in affected schools. The district will hold three online discussions about the latest proposals on Monday, followed by a public hearing at the Aug. 27 board meeting. The board is scheduled to vote on the changes Sept. 10, allowing time for new items to be part of this fall’s 2025 choice lottery.
Here’s what’s in the plan:
Early college expansion
Hill proposes to add ninth and 10th grades to the high schools located on Central Piedmont Community College’s Cato, Harper, Levine and Merancas campuses. That would add a total of 800 new magnet high school seats — 100 per grade level at each campus — that offer tuition-free college credit and a campus-based experience.
Those four sites are currently middle-college magnets that serve 11th and 12th graders, as well as any students who stay an extra year to keep earning free college credits. Hill said if students start the college experience in ninth grade they’re more likely to graduate in four years with an associate’s degree.
“If they choose to stop with an associate’s degree and go straight into the workforce, we’re setting them up (so) that when they graduate they can get a good-paying job immediately,” she told the board. “It also will put money in their parents’ pockets if they want to go on to a four-year university, because they have completed two years of college before they enter a UNC Charlotte, for example.”
The four middle-college schools do not offer transportation. The plan would convert them to early-college magnets, like the ones at UNC Charlotte and Central Piedmont’s uptown campus, with grades 9-12. Students would be eligible for “express bus” transportation.
Vaughan and Parkside
Hill proposes closing Dorothy J. Vaughan Academy of Technology, an elementary STEM magnet in northeast Charlotte, and moving its students, faculty and programs to nearby Parkside Elementary. All students would participate in the STEM program, with the name of the merged school to be determined.
She described Vaughan as having “an amazing program” with strong faculty and leadership, “but the building itself is not a great facility.” It was built in the 1950s as Newell Elementary, but the district built a new Newell several years ago and used the old building to house Vaughan.
Hill called that building “very ineffective to run from a finance standpoint.” She says it won’t be used for students again, but CMS hasn’t decided what to do with the property.
Meanwhile, Parkside is underfilled; last year just over 300 students attended a building with room for 780. With the Vaughan program, it’s expected to grow to about 650.
Arts shuffle
As outlined in the 2023 bond plan, University Park Creative Arts Academy will become a countywide arts magnet for K-5 while First Ward Creative Arts Academy, which is an elementary school now, will take grades 6-8. Northwest School of the Arts will lose the middle school grades and focus on high school arts. The board approved that plan in 2023.
All told, those three schools are expected to be almost 1,300 students below the capacity of the renovated buildings. Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight says the district hopes the upgraded arts facilities will attract students to the arts magnets.
University Park and First Ward currently include attendance zones. About 240 students from those zones would be reassigned to Bruns Avenue Elementary, a newly renovated neighborhood school that’s currently underfilled. Bruns is located between the two arts schools in west Charlotte.
Montessori and Marie G. Davis
As part of a Montessori expansion and relocation that was part of the bond package, J.T. Williams Secondary Montessori School, which serves grades 7-12, will relocate to Marie G. Davis School, located between I-77 and Tryon Street in south Charlotte.
Marie G. Davis is currently a K-8 neighborhood school with an International Baccalaureate magnet. IB magnet students could shift to other IB magnets in the district. The attendance zone would switch to Dilworth Elementary and Sedgefield Middle School, affecting fewer than 150 students.
Davidson and Bailey
Davidson K-8 School, which added middle school grades after an expansion in 2019, will return to an elementary school. About 400 middle school students will move to Bailey Middle School in Cornelius, which would grow to about 1,700 students. The board approved this plan in 2023 and no new action is required.
Hill said she doesn’t think small K-8 schools are able to effectively offer the academics and extracurricular offerings that full-size middle schools do.
“Size matters,” she said in a briefing about the proposals. “When you think about all of the things that middle school students would want – athletics, band, music, fine arts, CTE — all those programmatic offerings that you would like to offer at middle school, makes it very difficult. I am not a proponent of these very small K-8 schools because it just stretches the resources too thin.”
