Proposal to Improve CMS Rezoning Policy Goals Achievement

A group of parents with professional experience in project management, research, data analysis, digitalization, real estate, goal optimization and school improvement planning explored potential changes to CMS Draft 3 that enhance Board’s policy goals achievement. Based on their analysis, it is unlikely that all the goals set by the board can be met perfectly. However, the changes they propose do enhance the achievement of these goals.

They have not introduced any new changes, rather they have selected changes from 3 previous drafts that maximize policy achievements. In addition, their proposal also avoids assigning any family to 2 new schools! The 3 drafts proposed by CMS are presented in Figure 1 for reference.

Figure 1: South County Rezoning Drafts 1, 2, 3 presented by CMS Superintendent

To attain an optimized solution for a complex multi-variable optimization problem, it is essential to establish tolerances. Accordingly, they defined specific tolerances for each of the goals as outlined below:

1. Home to school distance = +/- 1 mile change is considered Neutral
2. Utilization = +/- 3% change is considered Neutral
3. SES = +/-1% change for Low SES is considered Neutral
4. Feeder pattern splits = +/-0 change is considered Neutral

They implemented this tolerance-based approach to evaluate Draft 1, Draft 2, Draft 3, and their proposed map. The comparison results for High Schools are outlined in Table 1, while the results for Middle Schools are summarized in Table 2.

Table 1: Policy Goal Achievement with Draft 1, Draft 2, Draft 3 and proposed map for High Schools

Table 2: Policy Goal Achievement with Draft 1, Draft 2, Draft 3 and proposed map for Middle Schools

The proposed map for middle school shown in Figure 2 was derived through an iterative process aimed at enhancing the achievement of policy goals and the changes include:

1. Jay M Robinson MS: Assign Ballantyne ES and Hawk Ridge ES to JMR MS. This change Positively impacts SES for JMR (reduces high SES and increases low SES). Impact on other goals remains Neutral.
2. New Relief Middle School: Re-assign Ballantyne ES and Hawk Ridge ES to JMR MS and assign Rea Farm to New Relief MS. These changes Positively impact Home to School distance (reduce ~2 miles for Rea Farms) and feeder splits (removes PRES and RF split). Impact on SES is Neutral. Impact on Utilization is reduced more than tolerance, but it opens room for future growth.
3. South Charlotte MS: Reassign a wedge portion between Ballantyne Commons, Interstate 485 and Johnston to JMR MS, increase the area splitting from McAlpine to JMR MS that is closer to JMR MS. These changes Positively impact Home to School distance (area reassigned from McAlpine is closer to JMR MS). Impact to all other targets is Neutral.

Figure 2: Proposed middle school map with changes to improve policy achievement

The corresponding improvement in goals achievement compared to Draft 3 are listed below. Their analysis shows a net Positive impact in progressing the Board’s policies.

Table 3: Impact of proposed High School map changes on Policy Goals

Similarly, the proposed map for high school shown in Figure 3 was derived through an iterative process aimed at enhancing the achievement of policy goals and the changes include:

1. Ardrey Kell HS: Reassign PRES and RF to Ardrey Kell, Reassign Ballantyne ES and Hawk Ridge ES to New Relief HS. These changes Positively impact feeder splits (remove PRES/RF split) and home to school distance (reduces distance for PRES/RF by ~2 miles). Impact to other targets is Neutral.
2. New Relief High School: Assign entire McAlpine ES to New Relief HS, Reassign Ballantyne ES and Hawk Ridge ES to New Relief HS. These changes Positively impact feeder splits (removes McAlpine ES split), SES (Increases high SES and reduces low SES) and home to school distance (BE/HRES change ~1 mile, McAlpine ES reduces by 1,3 miles).
3. Providence High HS: Reassign McAlpine ES to New Relief HS. This change positively impacts Utilization (reduces Providence HS utilization). Impact to all other goals is Neutral.

Figure 3: Proposed High school map with changes to improve policy achievement

Similarly, the corresponding improvement in goals achievement compared to Draft 3 are listed below. Their analysis again shows a net Positive impact in progressing Board’s policies.

Table 4: Impact of proposed High School map changes on Policy Goals

The analysis they conducted has relied on the limited data obtained from CMS presentations and publicly available sources.

The presented optimization method can be readily extended to incorporate more than 3 HS (High Schools) and 3 MS (Middle Schools). It is likely that such expansion would enhance the achievement of Policy Goals to a greater extent.