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We are looking to move to the area this summer. I thought I read somewhere last month that the Wake County School Board had voted to go to "neighborhood schools" in the fall of 2011. Is this definite? I want my kids to go to the school closes to where we live....we are also considering Johnston County schools....are they neighborhood schools or do they bus? Thanks so much for your feedback!
I am in Johnston County, our school is about a mile from us and my son rides the bus.
Let me clarify...what I mean by "bussing" is that I don't want him to go to a school that is not the closest school in proximity to him....does your son attend the closest school to him?
Johnston County still does neighborhood schools, and they have a few other options as well like Neuse Charter school, and have converted a couple of the Smithfield/Selma area schools to year round. They also have Middle College and Early College Academy. They have a couple of new schools on the western side of the county--Corinth Holders HS, Cleveland HS that opened last year, so redistricting for the new schools should be over by this point, other than the year-to-year tweeks that any district would have. Test scores of the schools on the western side of the county compete with most anything in Wake County. Great community support of their schools.
I would like to say that having lived here for decades, I am starting to see Johnston going thru what Wake experienced yrs ago when hi growth started to fill some schools. It starts with adding Year Round schools and building new schools to keep up with growth. It seems a lot of people want to move to Clayton/JoCo. While it might not be an issue now...I would expect them to have many of the same challenges wake currently has with fitting all the kids into existing schools. I think the difference for the time being will be negligible but i think the honeymoon won't last long. In keeping with the thread, I cannot speak to which one you should choose.
We are looking to move to the area this summer. I thought I read somewhere last month that the Wake County School Board had voted to go to "neighborhood schools" in the fall of 2011. Is this definite? I want my kids to go to the school closes to where we live....we are also considering Johnston County schools....are they neighborhood schools or do they bus? Thanks so much for your feedback!
I suggest you check the Wake County Public School System website and look at end of grade test scores for schools in area's you're looking to move to. many neighborhoods have a high % of college educated parents and it shows in the schools. kids do their homeowork and stay out of trouble
I can tell our experience with all schools in the Apex area was excellent. don't pay any attention to the politicians. they were elected by about 1% of parents. the vast, vast majority of us are very happy to live in one of the best public school systems in the country.
The only schools I would suggest in JoCo would be the Clayton area. Either in Clayton near US 70 and 42 / Flowers Plantation / Riverwood areas or the Cleveland Schools at 40 / 42. Do not know much about the recently opened Cleveland High School except it is getting crowded. These schools have a larger population of transplants and therefore seem to be better. The rest of JoCo appears to be spiraling into structured chaos. I know there has been more than 30-40 teachers who left the county since June 2010. One was JoCo teacher of the year in 2009 I believe that was the year?
Though I do not know much if anything about Wake besides the current controversy on neighborhood schooling...
Assignment in Wake County is still up in the air. They voted to do away with all of the 'diversity busing' but they haven't settled on a new assignment plan yet. The one they are working on right now is a bit of a mess (imho). Nobody has a base school--you have to participate in the selection process where you have a choice of about 5 elem schools, 4 middle and 3 high schools. You rank the schools you want in order and then they have 'priority rounds' to select who gets into each school. They are based primarily on proximity but there is no guarantee that you will get the school you want and you could end up at a different school from your neighbors. Magnet schools are still available and are in a separate selection process.
If (and this is a big if) this plan is implemented for next year, the selection process will begin in Dec or Jan of this school year. By the time you move here in the summer, you will have to take whichever school has seats available. I don't know if they are going to save seats for growth during the school year or what--they haven't said yet. But I think that newcomers are definitely at a disadvantage in this 'controlled choice model'.
I don't mean to alarm you, just wanted to let you know what is happening with school assignment right now in Wake County. We have school board elections coming up on October 11 (I am running for District 3 in North Raleigh/Rural Wake Forest ), and I think the Superintendent and some of the current board members want to get this choice model passed and put in place before new board members get seated in December. I think there are too many unresolved issues with this plan and we need to take the time to do it right.
I would like to say that having lived here for decades, I am starting to see Johnston going thru what Wake experienced yrs ago when hi growth started to fill some schools. It starts with adding Year Round schools and building new schools to keep up with growth. It seems a lot of people want to move to Clayton/JoCo. While it might not be an issue now...I would expect them to have many of the same challenges wake currently has with fitting all the kids into existing schools. I think the difference for the time being will be negligible but i think the honeymoon won't last long. In keeping with the thread, I cannot speak to which one you should choose.
The big difference to us in how the schools are being handled is that Johnston County actually did preplanning (with bonds a few years ago) to handle newcomers, which is why two new high schools were opened in the last year, and why West Johnston was opened 6 or 7 years ago, where Wake County has been notoriously underplanning, backpeddling, and scrambling to accomodate their growth. Yes, as areas grow there will always be some redistricting but as far as I know Johnston County has no plans to start bussing kids all over the county to hit some imaginary magic economic number. We have neighborhood schools, and the ones on the western side of the county compete with anything in Wake County as far as test scores go.
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), and I think the Superintendent and some of the current board members want to get this choice model passed and put in place before new board members get seated in December. I think there are too many unresolved issues with this plan and we need to take the time to do it right. 
