Waxhaw Mayor/Local Politician Template Letter
By Tes Hilaire on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 9:43am
Please be sure to attach your letter to the board of education. If you choose not to, please edit your letter to rephrase the first couple lines!!!! Also, be sure to personlize this letter with, at a minimum, your name at the bottom and the proper title for the local politician you are emailing! Any questions can be addressed to teshilaire@gmail.com
Dear Ms. Daune Gardner (mayor)/ Waxhaw commissioners
Attached you will find my letter to the board of education. I urge you to read it and step forward and take action. Other city and county officials have already come forward, voicing their constituents' concerns to the Board of Education and other involved political parties. Thus far, Waxhaw appears to have remained silent. Our community is looking to our elected officials to ensure our voices are heard. The residents of Millbridge did not just move into our community for its lovely houses or amenities. We moved here to be part of a greater community, the Waxhaw community. We dine in our local restaurants, shop the quaint downtown, and come out in droves for the many wonderful activities and events that this town has to offer. Whether we’ve lived here now for two months, two years, or seven, there is no denying that Millbridge residents love Waxhaw. Waxhaw is our neighborhood; it’s right in our backyard with all the nostalgia of a small town but with a warm and welcoming atmosphere that can’t be matched by any. It’s for many of these same reasons that we love our schools. We feel at home there, and it’s right in our backyard.
But now our neighborhood schools are being threatened to be taken away. The following points summarize the most common concerns this topic have provoked:
Sincerely,
[INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]
Dear Ms. Daune Gardner (mayor)/ Waxhaw commissioners
Attached you will find my letter to the board of education. I urge you to read it and step forward and take action. Other city and county officials have already come forward, voicing their constituents' concerns to the Board of Education and other involved political parties. Thus far, Waxhaw appears to have remained silent. Our community is looking to our elected officials to ensure our voices are heard. The residents of Millbridge did not just move into our community for its lovely houses or amenities. We moved here to be part of a greater community, the Waxhaw community. We dine in our local restaurants, shop the quaint downtown, and come out in droves for the many wonderful activities and events that this town has to offer. Whether we’ve lived here now for two months, two years, or seven, there is no denying that Millbridge residents love Waxhaw. Waxhaw is our neighborhood; it’s right in our backyard with all the nostalgia of a small town but with a warm and welcoming atmosphere that can’t be matched by any. It’s for many of these same reasons that we love our schools. We feel at home there, and it’s right in our backyard.
But now our neighborhood schools are being threatened to be taken away. The following points summarize the most common concerns this topic have provoked:
- Increased distance traveled (MillBridge students will experience travel distance 3x greater than current travel distance)
- Safety hazards relating directly to long bus routes on long, narrow roads
- Reduction in after-school activities or sports clubs due to increased travel distance / strained schedules
- Reduction in parent involvement (significant impact to success of student AND school cluster); MillBridge is a community of working class families who depend on relative work-school distance to be involved in school boards, athletic clubs, etc.
- Division of our neighborhood and the impact this will have on families, children and overall sense of community
Sincerely,
[INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]
Board of Education Letter Template
By Tes Hilaire on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 9:22am
Remember to personalize these letters with, at a minimum, your name at the bottom and address it by name to the board of education member you are writing! If you have further questions, please email teshilaire@gmail.com
Dear BOE Member,
I, along with the members of my MillBridge community, am writing you as a concerned Union County parent in regards to the current proposed redistricting plan presented on January 14th. Like many of my fellow Union County residents, I am deeply disturbed by the proposed plan and the resultant upheaval this is causing our county. My concerns, if I were to list them, would most likely resonate with many of the letters that have undoubtedly crossed your desk in the last couple weeks.
I am deeply saddened by some of the rifts that this proposed plan have provoked in face of uncertainty and potential upheaval. MillBridge community, in particular, has felt much of the brunt of this uncertainty. With the current plan calling for the division of our community, we are not just in fear of losing our place in the schools that we helped to make into our own, or the close relationships we established there, but we fear for what such a rift to our own community will cause.
I urge you to not rush into making a decision that will be difficult to undo. If you’re aware of some of the social media sites that are focused on this redistricting issues, you are also well aware of the further uncertainty and questions that have been raised regarding the McKibben report. Not only was the last McKibben report inaccurate, but the current McKibben report fails to take into consideration both soon-to-be-built private and proposed charter schools. Three Charter schools, set to open in Union County, have put in applications for approval, Frontier Academy, Union Prep, and Ballancrest. These three schools would gain final approval by April 2014 and would open their doors for the 2015 school year. All three plan to have k-8 programs, and according to Jim Turner, the contact for Union Prep, they would be adding a 9-12 program as soon as possible.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/14-15/frontiernarr.pdf
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/15-16/unionprep.pdf
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/15-16/ballancrest.pdf
Additionally, St. Matthews has plans to open a K-5 school, right on the corner of Waxhaw-Marvin and Kensington Road.Current projections based on reports from members of the Parish indicate the school could open as early as 2016 and there would be room for 700 elementary students. Based on their own projected numbers, these Charter schools would take on 2,902 K-8 students with another 700 K-5 students potentially being enrolled in St. Matthews private school. With the addition of these empty seats in the Union County school systems, there seems no need to move our K-8 students.
I would ask, again, that you take the time to fully study the patterns of growth in our county, consider how these proposed additions to both the private and public school systems will affect the capacities of our current clusters. Thought should also be taken into the long term effect of this redistricting on the county as a whole. People move into Union County for many reasons, but the first and foremost for families with school age children are for the schools. Union County is known to have some of the best schools in the state, and with proper parental involvement will continue to thrive. However, with the extreme distance that many families will be forced to traverse in their proposed redistricted clusters, particularly MillBridge (at 10.7 miles away, a distance over three times that which they travel now) parents are not going to be able to put the same sort of time and energy into a school that is many miles away versus one that is only a few miles down the road. Not only will the school system suffer from this lack of involvement, Union County will suffer as a whole as Union County becomes less of a desirable place to live.
If, after all other options have been taken into account, along the projected impact of these charter and private schools, it is found that some form of redistricting is still necessary, I would implore you to paint your lines with a minimalistic hand. Utilizing the “Before Reassignment” enrollment forecast (http://www.ucps.k12.nc.us/documents/BeforeReassignment.pdf), your current projections on the “Facilities Committee Proposal” (http://www.ucps.k12.nc.us/documents/FacilitiesCommitteeProposal.pdf) show schools like Parkwood and Monroe and Piedmont approaching the watch numbers at an earlier time-frame than the very school clusters you are drastically cutting children out of. As a parent, I would feel doubly wronged if my child was uprooted and bussed to extreme distances to be placed in an unknown environment only to find out a few years later that the move was not necessary.
MillBridge is not a surprise to Union County. Since it first broke ground back in 2007, MillBridge has always been a planned community of approximately 2000 homes. The developer of the time, GS Carolina, in a gesture of good faith, donated the land that Kensington Elementary now sits upon. Proving even more so that KES has the feel of a neighborhood school, its public entrance does, in fact, face our community and in order to reach it one has to drive through MillBridge. With current sentiment that developers are all about the bottom line, what message does this send to them if the efforts to plan for the future from a community such as MillBridge are ignored? Dividing half our community and sending them to an elementary school other than the one which is not only adjacent, but sits upon land that was once donated by that self-same community, is not the way to encourage developers to come forward and help with Union County’s current growth crisis.
I would ask that you take another look at MillBridge’s proposed road structure as well as its rate of growth. Three hundred and fifty homes over the seven years since ground was first broken is not an extreme number; in fact, MillBridge has reached less than 20% buildout in over seven years. Even with the pick-up in the current economy, MillBridge’s last year sales was 102 homes with projections for MillBridge’s next year calling for less than 100 and projections for 2016 just over 100. These numbers are far from the numbers tossed around on various social media sites. The feared strain on the school systems by MillBridge, is not the monster the school board needs to fear. Our growth rate is relatively steady and predictable. Maps have been in place that show MillBridge has a community concept. Connections from the Kensington Road side of the neighborhood to the Waxhaw-Marvin side of the neighborhood have been in place since conception; recent permit approval and confirmation from the developer forecast a projected completion date of December 31, 2014. Additionally, there is another planned Waxhaw-Marvin road entrance scheduled to connect near the Prescott subdivision with estimated completion of late 2015/early 2016. Going by the proposed cut off for the Waxhaw Elementary/Parkwood Cluster at Pine Oak Road, MillBridge could conceivably have been considered within the Cuthbertson cluster according to either the aforementioned connection to the Millbridge Parkway entrance or this new planned entrance on Waxhaw-Marvin, if current maps of the future neighborhood had been taken into consideration.
Though MillBridge may appear to be “split” on the map, it is not split in our hearts. Every summer our children get together at the pool. Children routinely skip over from one side of the community to the other to get together with their friends. According to the proposed redistricting maps datasheets, MillBridge is the only community that is being split between two school clusters. The board policy itself states that that all attempts will be made to preserve neighborhood groups and avoid making residential developments crossover established attendance lines. This policy was not made arbitrarily. Tight-knit neighborhoods, at their core, define a successful community. Just as removing a child from their current school system to be bussed to a school over three times the distance away is not conducive to promoting a healthy familial environment. I implore you as a parent, and a member of the MillBridge family, to keep the Waxhaw-Marvin residents of our community in our Cuthbertson school cluster and keep our neighborhood whole.
Sincerely,
INSERT YOUR OWN NAME
Dear BOE Member,
I, along with the members of my MillBridge community, am writing you as a concerned Union County parent in regards to the current proposed redistricting plan presented on January 14th. Like many of my fellow Union County residents, I am deeply disturbed by the proposed plan and the resultant upheaval this is causing our county. My concerns, if I were to list them, would most likely resonate with many of the letters that have undoubtedly crossed your desk in the last couple weeks.
I am deeply saddened by some of the rifts that this proposed plan have provoked in face of uncertainty and potential upheaval. MillBridge community, in particular, has felt much of the brunt of this uncertainty. With the current plan calling for the division of our community, we are not just in fear of losing our place in the schools that we helped to make into our own, or the close relationships we established there, but we fear for what such a rift to our own community will cause.
I urge you to not rush into making a decision that will be difficult to undo. If you’re aware of some of the social media sites that are focused on this redistricting issues, you are also well aware of the further uncertainty and questions that have been raised regarding the McKibben report. Not only was the last McKibben report inaccurate, but the current McKibben report fails to take into consideration both soon-to-be-built private and proposed charter schools. Three Charter schools, set to open in Union County, have put in applications for approval, Frontier Academy, Union Prep, and Ballancrest. These three schools would gain final approval by April 2014 and would open their doors for the 2015 school year. All three plan to have k-8 programs, and according to Jim Turner, the contact for Union Prep, they would be adding a 9-12 program as soon as possible.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/14-15/frontiernarr.pdf
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/15-16/unionprep.pdf
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/charterschools/applications/15-16/ballancrest.pdf
Additionally, St. Matthews has plans to open a K-5 school, right on the corner of Waxhaw-Marvin and Kensington Road.Current projections based on reports from members of the Parish indicate the school could open as early as 2016 and there would be room for 700 elementary students. Based on their own projected numbers, these Charter schools would take on 2,902 K-8 students with another 700 K-5 students potentially being enrolled in St. Matthews private school. With the addition of these empty seats in the Union County school systems, there seems no need to move our K-8 students.
I would ask, again, that you take the time to fully study the patterns of growth in our county, consider how these proposed additions to both the private and public school systems will affect the capacities of our current clusters. Thought should also be taken into the long term effect of this redistricting on the county as a whole. People move into Union County for many reasons, but the first and foremost for families with school age children are for the schools. Union County is known to have some of the best schools in the state, and with proper parental involvement will continue to thrive. However, with the extreme distance that many families will be forced to traverse in their proposed redistricted clusters, particularly MillBridge (at 10.7 miles away, a distance over three times that which they travel now) parents are not going to be able to put the same sort of time and energy into a school that is many miles away versus one that is only a few miles down the road. Not only will the school system suffer from this lack of involvement, Union County will suffer as a whole as Union County becomes less of a desirable place to live.
If, after all other options have been taken into account, along the projected impact of these charter and private schools, it is found that some form of redistricting is still necessary, I would implore you to paint your lines with a minimalistic hand. Utilizing the “Before Reassignment” enrollment forecast (http://www.ucps.k12.nc.us/documents/BeforeReassignment.pdf), your current projections on the “Facilities Committee Proposal” (http://www.ucps.k12.nc.us/documents/FacilitiesCommitteeProposal.pdf) show schools like Parkwood and Monroe and Piedmont approaching the watch numbers at an earlier time-frame than the very school clusters you are drastically cutting children out of. As a parent, I would feel doubly wronged if my child was uprooted and bussed to extreme distances to be placed in an unknown environment only to find out a few years later that the move was not necessary.
MillBridge is not a surprise to Union County. Since it first broke ground back in 2007, MillBridge has always been a planned community of approximately 2000 homes. The developer of the time, GS Carolina, in a gesture of good faith, donated the land that Kensington Elementary now sits upon. Proving even more so that KES has the feel of a neighborhood school, its public entrance does, in fact, face our community and in order to reach it one has to drive through MillBridge. With current sentiment that developers are all about the bottom line, what message does this send to them if the efforts to plan for the future from a community such as MillBridge are ignored? Dividing half our community and sending them to an elementary school other than the one which is not only adjacent, but sits upon land that was once donated by that self-same community, is not the way to encourage developers to come forward and help with Union County’s current growth crisis.
I would ask that you take another look at MillBridge’s proposed road structure as well as its rate of growth. Three hundred and fifty homes over the seven years since ground was first broken is not an extreme number; in fact, MillBridge has reached less than 20% buildout in over seven years. Even with the pick-up in the current economy, MillBridge’s last year sales was 102 homes with projections for MillBridge’s next year calling for less than 100 and projections for 2016 just over 100. These numbers are far from the numbers tossed around on various social media sites. The feared strain on the school systems by MillBridge, is not the monster the school board needs to fear. Our growth rate is relatively steady and predictable. Maps have been in place that show MillBridge has a community concept. Connections from the Kensington Road side of the neighborhood to the Waxhaw-Marvin side of the neighborhood have been in place since conception; recent permit approval and confirmation from the developer forecast a projected completion date of December 31, 2014. Additionally, there is another planned Waxhaw-Marvin road entrance scheduled to connect near the Prescott subdivision with estimated completion of late 2015/early 2016. Going by the proposed cut off for the Waxhaw Elementary/Parkwood Cluster at Pine Oak Road, MillBridge could conceivably have been considered within the Cuthbertson cluster according to either the aforementioned connection to the Millbridge Parkway entrance or this new planned entrance on Waxhaw-Marvin, if current maps of the future neighborhood had been taken into consideration.
Though MillBridge may appear to be “split” on the map, it is not split in our hearts. Every summer our children get together at the pool. Children routinely skip over from one side of the community to the other to get together with their friends. According to the proposed redistricting maps datasheets, MillBridge is the only community that is being split between two school clusters. The board policy itself states that that all attempts will be made to preserve neighborhood groups and avoid making residential developments crossover established attendance lines. This policy was not made arbitrarily. Tight-knit neighborhoods, at their core, define a successful community. Just as removing a child from their current school system to be bussed to a school over three times the distance away is not conducive to promoting a healthy familial environment. I implore you as a parent, and a member of the MillBridge family, to keep the Waxhaw-Marvin residents of our community in our Cuthbertson school cluster and keep our neighborhood whole.
Sincerely,
INSERT YOUR OWN NAME
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