As many as 1,000 Nash County students would be reassigned to different schools beginning in August under a plan that is scheduled to be approved Monday.
The board of education for the Nash County Public Schools system is set to vote on new school attendance zones as part of the upcoming demerger of the two school systems in the Twin Counties. Four school facilities will become part of the Edgecombe County Public Schools system next school year, and about 1,200 students living on the Edgecombe County side of Rocky Mount will be transferring school systems.
To reconfigure the Nash County Public Schools district’s student population in response to these expected changes, new attendance zones are being considered.
“You’re going to have basically, in my opinion, a neighborhood school system and close to a true feeder system for your middle schools and high schools,” Nash County Public Schools Superintendent Steve Ellis told the county’s Board of Commissioners this week.
The school systems in Nash and Edgecombe counties are working toward terminating the agreement in place in which all students who live in Rocky Mount attend schools in Nash County. Since Rocky Mount is partially in Edgecombe County, this has meant Edgecombe County residents who lived in the city were sending their children to Nash County schools. After the demerger process, Rocky Mount residents who live in Edgecombe County will attend Edgecombe County Public Schools with some exceptions being granted for students who are eligible to stay in the current school.
About 200 students from Edgecombe County, most of them attending Rocky Mount High School, have applied to remain in the Nash County Public Schools system. This includes about a dozen siblings who must transfer to Edgecombe County Public Schools once their older siblings graduate.
The opt-out for certain students was part of a legacy transfer option that both school boards and both county boards of commissioners had agreed upon as part of the demerger process.
But school board members discussing the reassignment plan at a committee meeting this week seemed reluctant to consider any type of grandfather clause for fifth-grade or eighth-grade students staying in their current school district.
Thomas Dudley of the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) told school board members that such an exemption could potentially result in one elementary school having more than 80 additional fifth-graders next school year.
OREd, part of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at N.C. State University, has worked with the Nash County Public Schools system to design the new assignments for students.
In addition to the school system losing four campuses, Edwards Middle School will be used as an elementary school beginning in August.
Also as a result of demerger, Williford Elementary School is being repurposed as a pre-kindergarten center. Englewood Elementary and Winstead Avenue Elementary schools, which previously served three grade levels each, are both becoming K-5 schools.
Dudley said student reassignments were created with the intent being to avoid school crowding and preserving direct feeder patterns that designate the schools that students follow as they move from one level to the next.
But some parents viewing the proposed attendance zone maps for the first time last month said the reassignments would move their children to schools that were too far from home.
Olivia Whichard, a mother of four, said the proposed attendance zones would move her son and daughter from Nashville Elementary, a 5-minute drive, to Winstead Avenue Elementary, which is three times as far away. Whichard, who said that both she and her husband attended Nashville Elementary, would like for her children to be able to remain there.
“My son has an IEP (Individualized Education Program), and he struggles with change,” she said. “All last year we had to physically drag him into the building just to get him to go to school. So changing schools would just be horrible for him.”
Whichard, who has a preschooler and a child at Nash Central Middle School, said that a change in the attendance zones could mean she would need to drive her children to school in Rocky Mount, return to Nashville to drop off her middle schooler and then drive back to Rocky Mount to work. She said that although she knew about the demerger plans, she never expected attendance zone changes to affect students as far west as Nashville.
“I didn’t think we would ever get redistricted,” she said. “We’re living in the same house I grew up in. I guess I never thought we would get moved around.”
Parent James Jones, whose daughter attends Nashville Elementary, was concerned when he learned last month that new proposed attendance zones could place her at Winstead Avenue Elementary.
“I really thought it (reassignment) was more of the Rocky Mount area,” he said. “I really didn’t think we would be affected by it.”
He was relieved to learn earlier this week that school board members were considering a different option for elementary reassignments, one that would leave his neighborhood in the Nashville Elementary attendance area.
Jones’ daughter, a rising fourth-grader, began at a private school during the COVID pandemic but transitioned into Nashville Elementary during first grade.
“She gotten comfortable. I hate that she has to move again, and it’s no fault of her own,” he said. “I’ve also heard Winstead is a good school, but I would like to keep my daughter comfortable in a perfect world.”
Parent Nicole Combs, the mother of three children attending Nash County Public Schools, is concerned about changes to the attendance zones that could separate her child from friends. She knew that her daughter, a rising seventh-grader at Edwards, would have to change schools next year because her school was being converted into an elementary school. But Combs expected a reassignment to Rocky Mount Middle. A proposed map unveiled at public forums last month would have placed her daughter at Nash Central Middle instead.
“The fact that our specific neighborhood was split right down the middle came as a pretty big shock. We were being shifted all the way out in the county versus the school that was just a couple of miles down the street from us,” Combs said. “The reason it’s such a sticking point is that the kids would be going from Nash Central Middle back to Rocky Mount High.”
She said that within 24 hours of the April 17 public forum, at least a dozen Edwards Middle families put in transfer requests to have their children sent to Rocky Mount Middle instead of Nash Central Middle.
A second middle school attendance zone option that the board viewed this week would have Rocky Mount Middle above capacity at the start of next school year, with 788 students assigned to a campus designed for 750.
With Nash County Public Schools going from having six middle schools to four next year, Ellis said that all the middle schools would be near capacity. According to proposed attendance zone maps, Northern Nash High and Southern Nash High appeared be over capacity. But Ellis said that the maps did not take into account the number of students attending CITI High, Nash Rocky Mount Early College High School or Tar River Academy, so schools should not be as crowded as the utilization numbers might indicate.
School board member Evelyn Bulluck said she was hesitant to approve an attendance zones map that would place schools over capacity.
“If we start out the school year at over 100 percent capacity, then I foresee that we’re going to run into a big issue,” she said. “How can we redo this so that we are not at 102 or 103, 107 percent capacity on day one? That concerns me a lot.”
She added that she would not want attendance zones changed in a way that added another 30 minutes to a student’s ride to school.
But school board member Lank Dunton said there likely would not be time to redesign attendance zones again before Monday’s meeting.
Proposed attendance maps can be viewed at ncpschools.net/page/ncps-proposed-maps-and-presentation. The school board is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday. A livestream is available at www.youtube.com/c/PRDptment.
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