July 28, 2010 - The first sample zone maps were presented to the Student Assignment Committee of the Wake County Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday, as the committee continued to develop a new method of student assignment to recommend to the school board.

John Tedesco, a school board member and chair of the Student Assignment Committee, worked with WCPSS Growth and Planning to meet an earlier request from committee members to compile a series of sample maps that reflect different ways schools may be grouped into zones.

The Student Assignment Committee composed of board members and their citizen advisors is beginning to look at the creation of zones where families would be assigned a seat in the schools in that zone. Tedesco said he would like to see families be guaranteed a seat in the zone and continue to have the opportunity to apply to magnet schools in other parts of the county.

At the meeting Tuesday, WCPSS Growth and Planning Senior Director Laura Evans presented a number of maps to the committee as samples to help the committee begin to consider ways of grouping schools into zones.

Evans noted the committee had indicated three criteria in creating these zones:

•They wanted contiguous zones

•That created community schools; and

•Resulted in minimal reassignment.

Evans provided sample maps based on current zones used in Wake County and showed where school facilities are located in those zones. The maps included postal zip codes with 39 zones, WCPSS area superintendent districts with 7 zones, Wake County planning regions with 10 zones and WCPSS transportation districts with 15 zones. Evans said her office made some adjustments to the map of WCPSS high school attendance areas addressing the need for contiguous zones and grouping some schools together for another sample map labeled proposed zones. It had 16 zones.

The postal zip codes zone map was discarded by the committee because it created too many zones.

Tedesco said he would like to receive community feedback on the various sample maps, and the committee agreed it would be good to solicit feedback by posting the maps on wcpss.net. He asked the committee to identify issues with the different zones and information they would want that would define zones.

The committee asked staff to bring back academic information by zone for the maps. The committee agreed to meet again August 31.