How will the new high school planned for Bailey Road relieve congestion at North Meck High? What are the plans for remodeling Davidson IB Middle School? Will kids from Davidson ever be able to walk or bike to schools on Bailey Road? How do honors courses at Bailey Middle and an Advanced Placement curriculum for a future Bailey High compare to the popular International Baccalaureate program at North Meck and Davidson IB Middle?

These were some of the topics addressed at Thursday evening’s forum on middle and high school issues in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The forum brought together interested teachers, parents and community members, who met at town hall with Mayor John Woods and several CMS leaders and school principals.

New high school site on Bailey Road

Site map shows location of the new Bailey Road high school. Click map to enlarge. SOURCE: Cornelius Planning Department. For the full map, go to the Cornelius Planning website.

This was the second CMS forum held in Davidson. The first, on March 27 (see our March 28 report), focused on elementary school concerns. Mayor Woods said another round of forums is planned for the beginning of the upcoming school year, tentatively set for September.

“These forums provide a greater level of communication,” Mayor Woods said, adding that “a full and open discussion” helps prevent misunderstandings.

“It’s an honor to continue this conversation,” said Dr. Lory Morrow, executive director of the North Learning Community for CMS, which includes the public schools in Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville.

New Bailey Road High School

The forum included a brief video showing the proposed design of the new Bailey Road High School, which will serve Davidson and Cornelius and be located next to the recently-completed Bailey Road Middle School. The $57.6 million construction project will result in a 100-classroom, single story building that is expected to take two years to complete. The school will be designed to serve about 2,000 students. Planning Specialist Dennis LaCaria told DavidsonNews.net that groundbreaking will likely occur in late summer or early fall.

“The No. 1 priority for a new school (for the entire CMS district) was the new school we’re building at Bailey Road, because of the overcrowding at North Meck,” Mr. LaCaria told the forum audience, saying that the construction project was made possible by the successful county-wide school bond vote in 2007.

North Mecklenburg High School, on Highway 115/Old Statesville Road in Huntersville, had 3,200 students two years ago. That made it the largest in North Carolina, and the overcrowding required 69 mobile classrooms. The new Bailey Road high school should relieve some of that pressure, and cut down on bus rides that can begin as early as 5:45 a.m. for high school students in Davidson.

“Things will change up here, absolutely, with a new high school,” Mr. LaCaria said.

Audience members asked about including a commuter rail stop at Bailey Road (no plans for that one at this point) and about ensuring that sidewalks extend beyond the school property borders to offer safe alternatives for walking and biking to school.

“Bailey Road is not at all safe,” said Bailey Middle Principal Angela Baucom, referring to the lack of sidewalks near where Bailey Road becomes a dead end. “But those are municipality decisions.”

“We’re in close touch with the Town of Cornelius to encourage that sidewalks are made off of the school site,” said Mayor Woods.

The high school building plan requires new road construction to allow fire trucks more access to the school campus in case of an emergency. Mr. LaCaria said that will involve a southern connection to the campus using Barnhardt Road, which feeds into Davidson-Concord Road near the main entrance to the River Run neighborhood. Preliminary plans would have a right turn from Bailey Road (heading east on Bailey away from Hwy. 115) leading in front of the new high school to a connection with Barnhardt.

Proposals for school boundaries for Bailey Road High should be posted on the CMS website by March 2009, said CMS student placement Director Scott McCully.

North Meck, IB construction plans

The 2007 school bonds vote also provided $6.2 million to remodel and upgrade the increasingly decrepit building that houses the Davidson IB Middle School on South Street. Planning for the remodeling work will not begin until this summer, and Mr. LaCaria said the project will likely take about 18 months to complete. No decision has been made as yet as to where students will be placed during the construction, though possibilities include using on-site mobile classrooms, or setting up mobile classrooms at a nearby CMS campus.

Mr. LaCaria said the project will likely also involve a joint partnership with the Town of Davidson, which has expressed an interest in building a recreational center that could serve both the school and the town.

“Towns have been great partners for us,” Mr. LaCaria said. “We realize that this is a historical building. It’s important for us not to lose the character of that building. We will be working for a very sensitive design.”

Meanwhile, North Meck is in the midst of its own remodeling. Principal Joey Burch said the school is building a new student parking lot and this summer will begin work to construct a 24-classroom addition to house science, art and other departments.

“We’ll even have our own elevator,” the principal noted happily.

He also told the audience that North Meck will be down to 2,213 students and 35 mobiles for the upcoming school year.

“We have stabilized in terms of growth,” Mr. Burch said.

Bailey Middle honors and IB constraints

As CMS prepares to seek bids for the new high school construction project, the Bailey Road Middle School is completing its second school year. Ms. Baucom, who is retiring this summer, said Bailey Middle now has 1,200 students and a faculty of 80. The school continues to fine-tune its curriculum and is about to add seventh-grade geometry.

“And we will be identifying top students for a new “high honors” program,” Ms. Baucom said.

She and Davidson IB Middle Principal Jo Karney enjoyed a “brag fest” at the beginning of the forum as they vied to top each other with school honors. Dr. Karney described the statewide success of the IB’s Future Cities and Science Olympiad teams. Ms. Baucom then brought up the Bailey sports teams, which were recognized for their sportsmanship, the band’s recent “superior” ratings, and the Battle of the Books team (which placed higher than Davidson IB’s team).

“I’ll meet you out back” Dr. Karney joked.

On a more serious note, members of the audience expressed concern that Davidson IB Middle is a highly-sought school assignment but has a limited availability to Davidson residents due to its small size and an application process that one parent described as “opaque.”

Mr. McCully said the application lottery for the upcoming school year resulted in 177 students ending up on the waiting list for a place in the sixth grade at the Davidson IB. (The North Meck lottery resulted in 77 students on the wait list for the ninth grade IB program.) The lottery is computerized and uses various “priorities,” including whether the applicant has a sibling already at the school or lives within one-third of a mile of the school. Those who are accepted to the IB must also perform well on their EOG (end of grade) test this spring.

“Kids in the lottery who do not meet the (EOG) requirement are sent back to their home school,” Mr. McCully said. “It can be very shocking to some parents.”

The renovations are not expected to expand the capacity of the IB school, which has about 80 students per grade. Nor are there any plans to put an IB program into either the Bailey Road middle or high school.

“Let me be clear about this: The IB will not be moved from North Meck,” said Mr. Burch, who said he hears rumors to the contrary “every week.”

While Davidson IB is a magnet school that exclusively offers the International Baccalaureate program, North Meck offers an IB diploma program and also Advanced Placement courses (which have college-level content) and a Career/Technical Program.

“Are AP classes just filled with people who couldn’t get into IB?” asked one parent.

“No,” said Hugh Hattabaugh, superintendent for the CMS north learning community. “There are people who are not interested in IB but want AP. International Baccalaureate is very prestigious and nationally respected, but AP also challenges students.”

Ms. Baucom acknowledged that the new “high honors” program is intended to offer the kind of rigor that an IB curriculum encourages, but she also stressed that students at Bailey who take foreign languages and algebra “are ready for IB” at North Meck.

And Dr. Karney added her own family’s experience. She told the forum that her daughter started out at Davidson IB, “but dropped out” to pursue an interest in theater. “I.B. is not the end-all, be-all,” Dr. Karney said.

Mr. Burch concurred, saying too often he sees students entering the IB program because their parents know some college admissions offices give extra weight to Grade Point Averages that include IB courses.

“It breaks my heart to see what kids are being forced into,” he said. “Our kids need to understand that all opportunities are important and success is not only GPAs. It’s amazing the opportunities that are out there.”