A computer science-focused early college high school could come to western Wake County
In the face of increasing charter school competition, the Wake County school system wants to add a specialized high school in Morrisville and additional language immersion elementary schools across the district.
Wake County school administrators said this week they’re hoping to open an early college high school focused on computer sciences on Wake Technical Community College’s RTP Campus in Morrisville in 2021. Also that year, Wake is looking at boosting the number of elementary schools where students can take all their academic classes in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.
“We want to offer choice for students,” Edward McFarland, Wake’s chief academic advancement officer, said in an interview after Monday’s student achievement committee meeting. “We want to offer lots of opportunities in various settings, various ways and not just in the same mold.”
Like other North Carolina school districts, Wake County has found itself facing increasing competition for students from private schools, home schools and charter schools. It’s one of the reasons why Wake grew by only 42 students last school year, reducing the district’s share of all the students in the county to 78% last year.
In 2020, Kaleidoscope Charter High School is set to open as the first public high school in Morrisville. Also in 2020, CE Academy has been approved by the state to open as a bilingual K-8 Mandarin charter school in the Cary area.
Superintendent Cathy Moore told school board members Monday the district is considering the impact of other educational options as they weigh where to place new district programs.
“Would it make sense for a full language Chinese immersion program to be in western Wake County?” Moore said. “Maybe. It wouldn’t be for the reasons we created magnet schools. It would be for other reasons.”
Wake has usually placed magnet schools in high-poverty areas or places where many families are no longer sending their children to the neighborhood schools. Unique offerings are provided at the magnet schools to attract applicants.
First district high school in Morrisville
The Wake school system has talked for decades about opening a high school in Morrisville, but the lack of a large, affordable site has been an issue. But the early college option would allow the district to use the Wake Tech RTP Campus that opened in 2018.
Wake school officials say they’re in early planning phases of a partnership with Wake Tech to host the RTP Early College on the new campus starting in the 2021-22 school year. Wake will apply for state funding.
Early colleges are small public high schools that offer students a chance to graduate with a diploma and tuition-free college credit. The schools are a partnership between school districts and local colleges, often community colleges.
Wake has six early colleges, which are all popular and have high graduation rates. The six early colleges offer specialized courses such as collision repair, cosmetology, culinary arts, early childhood education and welding.
Possible areas mentioned for the new RTP Early College are computer programming, cybersecurity, analytics, cloud computing and biotech.
“The Wake Tech opportunity is one I’m very excited about,” school board member Bill Fletcher, whose district includes much of Cary, said in an interview. “It’s not something we have now.”
Language immersion schools
Language immersion programs have also been something Wake has used to attract families to attend certain schools. In an immersion program, some students spend half or all of their school day taking their academic subjects in a different language.
Wake has a full Mandarin Chinese immersion program at Stough Elementary in Raleigh. Wake has a full Spanish language immersion program at Jeffreys Grove Elementary in Raleigh and a dual Spanish immersion program at Hodge Road Elementary in Knightdale.
The elementary students can continue their language studies at Daniels Middle School and Broughton High School, both in Raleigh.
According to Wake’s data, the Jeffreys Grove and Stough immersion students have higher math and reading scores than their classmates not in the program. The Hodge Road immersion students are performing better in reading and the same in math as those not in the program.
The immersion students are a mix of children whose families applied to attend and those who live in the attendance area.
School officials say they’re considering adding a second full Spanish immersion elementary school and a second full Mandarin Chinese immersion elementary school in 2021. Wake would pick two existing schools to offer the new program.
Moore, the superintendent, said they haven’t decided yet whether the new schools will become magnet schools like the existing immersion schools. It’s also not been determined where they will be located.
School board member Lindsay Mahaffey said the exemption that immersion schools have from the state’s smaller K-3 class size rules can help in crowded parts of the county. But she said learning another language will also help young children with the development of neural pathways.
“I taught French and Spanish at the elementary level,” Mahaffey said in an interview. “They’re just so beneficial.”
This story was originally published November 26, 2019 at 8:00 AM with the headline "A computer science-focused early college high school could come to western Wake County."
