The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board is weighing boundaries that would send students zoned to the Marie G. Davis K-8 school and Dilworth Elementary School to a new elementary school opening in 2026 on Park Road.
Superintendent Crystal Hill ultimately recommended moving 829 students currently zoned to Marie G. Davis and Dilworth into the new facility so it would open at around 85% capacity.
Consultants with Cropper GIS Consulting, who have been working with the district on the new boundaries, forecast the school will reach 89% capacity in 10 years.
But the plan would remove out-of-zone enrollment at the new school. That could affect many of the roughly 138 students who’ve transferred to those schools from elsewhere in the district. Those students would likely be relocated — either to their zoned home school or, for magnet students, another magnet program.
There could be some exceptions. Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight said a nominal number of those students transferred under a policy that allows school change if a student’s home school is deemed low-performing.
“Potentially these students would move to the new school in support of the transition because that’s where they had planned to move, and then we would potentially move students in the future to another school to maintain the 85% for future enrollment," Balknight said.
Students from the new elementary school would go on to Sedgefield Middle School and later to Myers Park High School and Harding University High School.
Consultants from Cropper GIS Consulting presented a second option, which would also include around 98 students currently zoned to Selwyn Elementary School.
That would put the new school at 95% capacity at opening, but would provide relief to the crowded Selwyn facility.
Cropper GIS held multiple community engagement sessions over the last several weeks and gathered public input. The consultants say 98% of those surveyed preferred the option Hill ultimately recommended, calling it the least disruptive.
Feedback indicated, however, that families of transfer students may be opposed to returning to their home schools.
The school board voted in the fall to make Marie G. Davis a full Montessori magnet program as part of a flurry of boundary changes approved in Phase I of the district's Comprehensive Review of student assignment, which is conducted every four years. Marie G. Davis is currently a K-8 school that serves both neighborhood students and a magnet International Baccalaureate program.
But after families balked at a plan to move those displaced neighborhood students to the already overcrowded Dilworth Elementary School, the board voted to hold off on the change until this new facility opened in 2026 to relieve Dilworth. The existing Dilworth building will become a magnet middle school.
A public hearing on the proposed change is set for June 5, with a vote later in the month.
The CMS Board had initially been planning to embark on Phase II of the Comprehensive Review to further assess the district's student assignment. That was scheduled to take place through March. But in December the board asked for more time to review data, and the board has not considered any further changes to student assignment until now.
In a statement to WFAE last week about the Comprehensive Review, CMS said it is evaluating "data related to the ten-year forecast and the review of our Choice programs. After a thorough evaluation, we will present our findings to the board during the 2025-2026 school year."
