Millbridge Redistricting

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Meeting With Mayor Daune Gardner

By Johanna Bowman

Today I attended the meeting with Waxhaw's Mayor Daune Gardner at Café Bliss. The meeting went really well. She has written a resolution to the UCPS school redistricting issue. Her resolution states that the Town of Waxhaw is concerned with both the overcrowding of our schools as well as the proposed redistricting of schools serving the children of Waxhaw and surrounding areas. It states

"Whereas, the Board of Commissioners believes that any redistricting plan should not divide neighborhoods or families between schools; Whereas, the Board of Commissioners believes that students should attend schools located near their residences in order to minimize travel and to enhance a sense of community". It goes on to say that the Board of Commissioners does not believe that the current proposed redistricting plan will achieve the desired outcome for the residents of Waxhaw and surrounding areas. It requests the Union County Board of Education to further investigate and consider other options.

Mayor Gardner's position is that redistricting right now is not the answer to the problem. She is proposing that all options be carefully considered. Redistricting will solve the problem TODAY but it does not solve the problem that will inevitably arise in a few years if redistricting is all they do. It is clear that UCPS needs to build new schools but that solves the problem in a few years but does not do anything about the overcrowding we are experiencing today. We need to build new schools AND do something to alleviate the overcrowding we are experiencing today. Right now the problem is that there is a disconnect of communication between the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education. As it stands right now when a developer requests to build the Board of Commissioners sends a request to the Board of Education asking if the school system can handle the growth. The Board of Education always sends back that it can even though we know full well that it can't. The Board of Education strategic planning committee is supposed to hold meetings and give an informed response to requests for seats in the schools. They have not held a meeting since January of 2013! Instead they just approve everything. When it was brought up that the Board of Commissioners should just tell the developers that they cannot build here right now because we don't have a school system to support the growth she responded by saying that we don't want to push out good developers. She said that we want Landeavor and Shea Homes to be here. She then went on to say that she has started a task force with Rick Garner and one or two others. I forget the exact nature of the task force but I am glad that Rick is involved. She wants to get away from the 'big, bad developer' image and show that there is a partnership there to help the community as a whole. In regards to building new schools she spoke of the fact that not only do they need to be built but that they need to be built in the right location. Right now our schools are not all in the best locations to serve the children in Union County.

Of course this resolution still has to be voted on and accepted by the Board of Commissioners. If it is accepted it is just the first step in a list of things that she wants to accomplish. She pointed out that most of the commissioners have not been there very long. She said that two of them have been there for two years and the other three for only two months. She is up for reelection next year. She does not want to solve this problem for only the time that she has left to serve us. She wants to get procedures created and committed to policy so any official coming after will have to follow and we will not find ourselves in this mess again. Right now as she put it we are in a state of 'cleanup' due to BOE's failure to 'plan'. She wants to get a plan set up not only to solve our current problem but to plan for the future, for the students that may not even be in school yet. The goal is to have a plan set in that will allow for new schools to be built as the growth happens instead of waiting for it to happen and then trying to clean up the mess that was created.

In regards to voicing our concerns at the regular board meetings that allow the 30 minutes of public comment. Mayor Gardner advised to keep in mind that the board has an agenda to follow and that although they will listen and hear our comments at the meeting the school redistricting is not the only thing they are focusing on. The meeting where we will have the most impact will be the cluster meetings where everyone is able to get up and give comments. Right now that meeting is not 'policy' but there has been a precedent to have the meeting and she is going to work to try and make sure we are given that meeting that has been promised. Our opportunity to make the most impact is at that meeting. She encourages everyone to come out and voice your concerns for that meeting.

The Board of Commissioners meeting where Mayor Daune Gardner will present her resolution for voting has been rescheduled to Monday Feb 3rd at 6:30pm at the Museum of the Waxhaws. She encourages everyone to come out and put a little friendly pressure on the commissioners to encourage them take a stance. Lets all go to the meeting to show her our support. We all wanted our mayor to stand up and support us, now she is so lets show her our appreciation. She wants to make sure that we all understand that the Board of Commissioners are on our side and we need them to help fix things with the Board of Education. So lots of clapping for things we like and lets keep things positive! I will be there at the meeting on Monday and I hope to see you all there too.

I am now part of a committee with the mayor and I will keep you updated as we have meetings and new things come to light.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Letter Templates

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:

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

I assure you, there are many additional concerns heard throughout our community. Our MillBridge family is asking that you take a stand and speak out against the proposed redistricting. We look to you as our leaders, to represent us and voice our concerns.

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

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Proposal to Keep Millbridge Together

In the event that the Board of Education decides to go through with the redistricting we have a proposal composed by a fellow Millbridge resident to keep Millbridge from being split apart. I know a few of you expressed a desire to see it so here it is:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZXm9zasCRY34UqKIEkKupEfVAqK5XQMNMyFCrYvhqoA/mobilebasic

Deed to Kensington Elementary

For those interested here is a copy of the deed to the land donated for Kensington Elementary. There is no stipulation that guarantees all Millbridge children attendance at Kensington but I don't see how anyone could have foreseen this happening.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxag_QSv8kZHVUxJVDB2cW10OTZlQ1Z1WWhpUjRma2Q1RVRv/edit?usp=sharing

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The BAD-NEWS-FOR-MILLBRIDGE proposal being spread about

For those who were interested, here is the newest version of a proposal that has been presented to the board, which would have a devastating affect on ALL of Millbridge. We MUST protect our community and move forward with our message of unity and counter these sorts of proposals with Cold, Hard facts! Write the BOE members and our local politicians! Go to the scheduled meetings (Millbridge will be wearing black) and let us be heard!

Lets Show Our Support!!!

Showing up at these meetings could be very beneficial to our fight. Even though we may not be able to speak at each meeting our presence will speak for us. If nobody shows up then that sends the message that we don't care and are fine with them busing our children 10 miles away when Cuthbertson is only 3 miles away! Our presence and numbers matter! Lets show them we care!!

January 23rd 6:00pm

Board of Education work session

Monroe High School

1 High School Drive

Monroe, NC

(no public comments)

Feb 3rd 7:00pm

Union County Board of Commissioners Meeting

Union County Government Center

Board Room - 1st Floor

500 North Main Street

Monroe, NC