Parents, CMS board concerned about proposed changes to magnet schools program

HUNTERSVILLE — Parents and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board members are unhappy with the proposed changes to its magnet program that were presented at Wednesday night’s board meeting.

Trillium Springs Montessori in Huntersville and its students and staff would move into north Charlotte’s newer Lincoln Heights Academy next school year.

Lincoln Heights would also be expanded by three classrooms.

“They were not told, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re shutting down you’re building and moving all of you eight miles away from Huntersville to Charlotte into massive traffic’ until two weeks ago,” said Rhonda Cheek, CMS board member.

Cheek, who represents the district where Trillium is located, is not the only board member upset with the proposed changes that is up for a vote on Nov. 9.

“We thought about this as a high school reopening with a magnet program,” said Lenora Shipp, a CMS board member.

Under the proposal, CMS would reopen E.E. Waddell High School as somewhat of a magnet high school after it closed in 2010.

It would house a career and technical education academy, another for novice-level English learners and the district’s Virtual Academy Serving grades 5 through 12.

School board members are concerned about the recommendation that when it opens, E.E. Waddell would initially only be for ninth and 10th graders and it would not have its own athletics.

“It sounds like this a piece meal now, high school,” Shipp said. “We’re putting this program over there. That program over there.”

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The community was not told E.E. Waddell would be structured that way, Shipp said.

“I’m very concerned,” Shipp said. “I don’t think I can go with this one at all.”

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