Wake County Schools - Handling the Growth

While much of the debate this year has been on whether to move to year-round schools and require compliance by all parents and students, the Wake County School Board doesn't seem to be considering all the options. Perhaps this reflects the likelihood that most, if not all, of the school board members are from private or business environments where solutions are brought about by throwing more money at problems without being creative to find alternative solutions.

Here are a couple of possibilities the county might consider that could make a big difference in using existing schools and resources that haven't seen the light of day in public discussions.

In the world of manufacturing, factory sites have long been operated in multiple shift arrangements in order to get more out of fixed assets and resources. Many operate on two or three shift arrangements to use the existing facilities and investment without building more brick and mortar structures. This has always been an alternative when production demands grow and simply adding more manpower and using good management allows companies to be much more productive and spread costs over more product. It may not suit all families for schools to operate on two shifts but such an arrangement would certainly allow the physical resources to be more effectively used by adding more teachers and staff and scheduling sessions to allow students be accommodated when parents might work on corresponding shifts in businesses, etc. Many businesses operate with two shifts and surely the second shift parents would consider having heir children attend school on the same shift when they work.

Another area where costs could be addressed would be to eliminate busing students all over the county simply to achieve racial and socio-economic balance. The cost to provide cross county busing to provide "better education for all" is a worn out idea and costs the county and state a fortune in additional fuel and driver costs and there is also a possibility that the number of buses needed might even be reduced if this wasteful process were eliminated. Students might even be able to get up at reasonable times and have more time with their families. Cross county busing gets much more costly each time the cost of fuel increases and this problem will not go away in our lifetime.

Perhaps if more citizens were participating in producing creative solutions for schools and growth there would be more cost effective ways to provide more capacity and handle some of the growth. As this issue grows to affect more areas in the state no doubt there will be more ideas generated and solutions found.

JP