After a summer of controversy, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board will take on a task that's difficult for any school board: deciding where students go to school.
CMS plans to reopen Elbert Edwin Waddell High School as a comprehensive high school and open a new middle school on Stumptown Road — which will affect other schools’ attendance boundaries.
The changes are in response to the district’s 2024 comprehensive review and officials hope the new schools will relieve some of CMS' most overused facilities. (Here's the full proposal with associated maps.)
District officials presented the proposed changes at a school board work session Thursday. The board is using Cropper GIS to help draw the boundaries. Matthew Cropper, the firm's president, said it took into account how far students live from their schools, demographics and building utilization.
The board will review the changes again at its Nov. 10 meeting and will hold several engagement sessions in November and December before a vote in February.
For Waddell, the board is weighing two options for a new attendance boundary that officials hope will relieve Palisades High School, the district’s most crowded high school at 140% of capacity.
One would reassign just over 1,000 students in a shuffle that includes Waddell, Palisades and underused Olympic High School. Waddell would gain 331 students from Olympic, 298 from Palisades and 662 from magnet programs. Palisades would send 449 to Olympic. That arrangement would decrease Palisades’ utilization to 96.2% and raise Olympic’s from 78.6% to 85.7%.
Another option would leave Olympic out of the equation, move 675 students from Palisades to Waddell and reduce Palisades’ utilization to 100%.
Some students already moved from Olympic to Palisades when Palisades opened in 2022. Board member Lenora Shipp asked which areas are being asked to send students back to Olympic and which aren’t. Acting Superintendent Melissa Balknight said the district’s demographic projections show growth in the area around Olympic.
“The growth for us will be at the River District, and that will impact Olympic, so that’s why we also are trying to be careful of how many students we move into Olympic,” she said.
Officials also proposed two boundary options for the new middle school that would aim to relieve Francis Bradley and Bailey middle schools, which are at 101% and 162% capacity, respectively. The options are similar — both would move about 1,000 students, bring all three schools under capacity and keep all students’ future high schools the same, with only slight differences in the attendance boundaries.
If approved, the changes would take effect in the 2028-29 school year. Eighth and 12th graders that year could stay at their current schools, with district transportation for their final year. Other students could request to stay but would need their own transportation.
