Hundreds attend CMS meeting on proposal that could move thousands of students

CHARLOTTE — Hundreds of parents attended a community feedback session Wednesday night at South Mecklenburg High School on how boundaries will change for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the southern part of the county.

The parents gave CMS officials their thoughts on the massive proposal to redraw boundaries and reassign thousands of students due to several new schools being planned.

“CMS is changing plan every week,” parent Shailesh Shukla said. “Last week, I was in a new school. This new plan. I don’t know.”

The draft version of the new boundary lines would be set off by the new high school currently under construction at Community House and Johnston roads.

CMS officials said the relief school will help relieve overcrowding across the district when it opens for the 2024-2025 school year.

The draft version of the new boundary lines would be set off by the new high school currently under construction at Community House and Johnston roads.

CMS officials said the relief school will help relieve overcrowding across the district when it opens for the 2024-2025 school year.

“They’re building a new relief school,” Shukla said. “They’re building a thousand new homes. There won’t be any relief. Believe me.”

Whether a student moves or stays in their current school will depend on new feeder patterns and target enrollment numbers.

“My elementary school student would not go to J.M. Robinson,” parent Jeanine Craft said. “They would go to south Charlotte, which is traffic in the morning, so the distance would probably double.”

Most of the parents were concerned about data from CMS, which showed the current and projected socioeconomic status of the schools impacted by the process.

South Meck, for instance, would go from a current 47% of students who are considered low socioeconomic status to a projected 50%.

“We would love to have a diverse school and, in any scenario, we want diversity, but in south Charlotte, to be honest, that just isn’t feasible,” Craft said.

The proposal is in its early stages and revised versions will be presented in the future.

There will also be impacts related to the new elementary school under construction on Ardrey Kell Road.

CMS will do another round of community feedback sessions when it publishes a second draft next week.

The first meeting for that will be on April 19 at Ardrey Kell High School.

The proposal includes plans for a new middle school in southern Mecklenburg County.

The district was able to acquire the land for that but voters could be asked to approve a $2 billion bond in November that would pay for the construction.

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