Parents pleased, angered by proposed changes in Rock Hill school choice

Rosewood Elementary second-grade teacher Holly Caillaud calls her class to her whiteboard Friday, showing how to subtract double-digit numbers.

It’s a math lesson, but every word is spoken is in French.

The students, in their third year of the school’s French language immersion program, work problems on paper, asking and answering questions in French. They appear well on their way to becoming bilingual students.

Caillaud, the only second-grade French immersion teacher at Rosewood, came to Rock Hill to teach in French. She says one thing is holding back the program: the need to bring together pieces that are scattered across the district.

“I need teachers to talk to, I need more people to work with and share ideas,” Caillaud said. “We can truly become a multicultural setting that focuses on language immersion.”

Rock Hill schools Superintendent Kelly Pew wants to consolidate the district’s two immersion programs – French at Rosewood and Spanish at Ebinport and Richmond Drive elementaries – into one site.

The consolidation is one of several long-term, sweeping changes Pew proposed last week that would affect school choice programs and other schools across the district.

Choice programs are special instructional programs in language, art, science and other areas that are open to students who apply. Pew said her proposals address limited availability of the choice programs to all students and continuity of the programs through middle and high school.

Pew said her proposals also address a disparity of classroom space across the district. Extra classroom space is available at York Road, Lesslie, Ebenezer Avenue and Finley Road elementary schools, she said, while India Hook and Ebinport elementary schools are overenrolled.

Some teachers and parents say they are pleased with Pew’s proposed changes. Others have voiced questions and concerns, while others are upset and angry.

The discussion is expected to continue at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, when Pew is scheduled to present her proposals to the Rock Hill school board during a work session at the district office. A vote on changes could come as early as Feb. 22.

Limited room for students

Consolidating the three elementary school language immersion programs, either in a new, separate building on the Sullivan Middle School campus or in a new elementary school to be built in the next few years, is one of the most dramatic proposals. The consolidation would not happen until at least 2018, Pew said.

Kellie Payne, the mother of twin daughters in first-grade French immersion at Rosewood, sees the idea as a chance to put Rock Hill school programs “on the map.”

“Long term this is a good thing,” Payne said. “Short term, there may be growing pains that may be inconvenient for parents.

“I think it just requires an open mind and a positive attitude,” Payne said. “It also requires people to have foresight about what this will do for our community in the years to come.”

Rosewood Principal Stephanie DiStasio said the consolidation would likely open the program to more students. Rosewood is near capacity with about 600 students.

DiStasio said her school has only been able accept about five out-of-zone kindergarten students in the immersion program each fall. Older children cannot enter the program, she said, because they don’t have the language foundation.

“We get calls across the district each year from parents who say, ‘I didn’t know this was an option, can I get my child in now?’” she said. The answer, DiStasio said, is no.

Displacing students

A significant change that’s more immediate involves displacing students in the Montessori school choice program at Sylvia Circle Elementary.

The Montessori proposal has angered parents such as Lia Hopkins, the mother of kindergarten and second-grade students in the program. She said she has been happy with the program.

Under the proposal, she said, her older child would move to a different school next fall, while her younger child could remain at Sylvia Circle for another year.

“I had no idea this was coming, and that’s the part that has angered a lot of us,” she said. Hopkins said she and other parents are “astonished about the immediate changes that are going to happen. We are left with very little time and even less choices.”

Pew wants to move the Montessori program so she can move Head Start students from the Edgewood Center to Sylvia Circle. The district partners with the Head Start preschool program for disadvantaged children by providing classroom space for $1 a year, she said.

Pew said the district would need to spend $1 million on the Edgewood building to continue the federally funded program there. Pew said making the improvements isn’t a good use of taxpayer money, and she wants to move Head Start and sell the center.

Hopkins said she understands the need to move Head Start, though she said the district should have known about the need to move that program for some time.

“But to go into a school, and take that school apart, because you cannot find another location for Head Start. Is that me, or is that the poorest planning you have ever seen in a school district?” Hopkins said.

Hopkins said she has questions about the future. “What am I going to do now with my kids? Where are they going to go to school? And can I keep them together?”

‘School-based inquiry’

Pew has proposed moving younger Montessori students, from 3-year-olds to second graders, to either Ebenezer Avenue Elementary or the Central Child Development Center on East Black Street in the fall of 2017.

A new building would be needed at Ebenezer Avenue, and some other improvements would be needed at CDCC to make that happen, she said.

If the younger Montessori program moves to CDCC, she said, children in the CDCC 4-year-old program would move to their zoned schools. In that case, the 4-year-old program would no longer be consolidated at one site.

Older Montessori students at Sylvia Circle in grades three to five, including Hopkins’ oldest child, would move to Ebenezer Avenue next fall to make room for Head Start.

The district would begin a “school-based inquiry” program for the older students instead of Montessori, Pew said.

Pew acknowledged her proposal for Syliva Circle would split siblings in the older and younger choice programs for one year if both groups are moved to Ebenezer Avenue.

Additionally, Pew said about 120 students who attend Sylvia Circle would need to move to either Ebenezer Avenue or Belleview elementary schools to make space for the Head Start program.

Pew said several other proposals for choice programs have been discussed, but she is not considering them seriously because they involve rezoning large groups of students.

Gwen Finley, a Rock Hill NAACP representative on the choice committee, voiced concerns about rezoning. “We were adamant about not rezoning,” she told Pew. “I don’t think we need to go down that road.”

Hopkins and other parents who learned about Pew’s proposals said they want more details about a “school-based inquiry” program.

Pew said the Montessori program at Sylvia Circle isn’t the same in third grade, when children must begin to meet state education standards. School districts are judged for student performance in those areas, she said, so the program needs to change.

“What inquiry-based education allows you to do is, children still have a lot of ownership and ability to work at their own pace in a different way, as does Montessori,” Pew said. Teachers also loop, or remain with classes for more than one year, she said.

Pew said district leaders plan to meet with Sylvia Circle parents.

Rich Melzer, director of school choice programs, said the inquiry-based program will likely be modeled after a Center for Inquiry public choice school in Richland County District Two, which district leaders plan to visit.

“We want to find as similar an environment for those children as we can, but also doing it in a way that students are being taught those state standards,” Pew said.

Transportation issues

Pew has also proposed improving accessibility to school choice programs by providing transportation to students who attend a choice program outside their school zone.

The district provided bus transportation for school choice programs in the past but eliminated it a few years ago in recession-era budget cuts.

Pew said the district, which would have to bear the cost of choice program transportation, spent at least $100,000 a year, and perhaps more, on school choice bus transportation in the past.

She expects the cost will be higher this time. The district won’t know for sure until it gets enrollment numbers for the choice programs.

Pew said she believes the district can afford the cost.

Ginny Moe, a former school board member who served on the choice committee, applauded the transportation proposal.

“They have recognized that will provide opportunity for everyone,” Moe said. “But I am afraid that won’t be enough.”

Moe and other parents are concerned about student diversity in some of the choice programs.

Dawn Smrekar, an Ebinport parent on the school choice committee, said the language immersion program there has more white children and fewer children who get free and reduced-price lunch than other classrooms.

One reason may be that information about the language program was mostly by word of mouth, she said.

Children must begin the immersion program in kindergarten, and the enrollment process began so early the previous school year that many parents were never aware of it, Smrekar said.

She said Pew’s proposals to offer student transportation and to do better marketing may help improve diversity.

Smrekar also wondered about the effect on the elementary school of moving the program. She said Ebinport’s most involved parents come from the immersion program. If the program moves, she said, the school will lose a strong support network.

“I feel like it’s selective rezoning by picking up those children and moving them,” Smrekar told Pew. “I feel like there are some strong arguments against moving those children off our campus.”

Melzer said school leaders examined the demographic effect of moving immersion students out of the three elementary schools and did not see a problem.

He said the schools would still have demographics that reflect the overall district.

“They had been good performing schools before having the immersion program,” he said.

Looking to the future

Pew’s remaining proposals involve studying how to expand existing choice programs to middle and high schools.

Those proposals are:

▪  Continue the Accelerated Studies, or gifted and talented program, at Sunset Park Elementary, but increase the number of participating students from 30 to as many as 60.

Pew wants the district to study the feasibility of a middle school gifted and talented program for students who finish the program at Sunset Park.

▪  Continue the arts integration program at Northside Elementary and study the need for a performing arts program at York Road Elementary and Rawlinson Road Middle schools, which both have available classroom space.

▪  Pew recommended no change to the International Baccalaureate program offered at Rosewood Elementary, Sullivan Middle and at all three high schools.

▪ The science and technology, engineering and math, or STEM program, at Oakdale Elementary and the science, technology, engineering, arts and math, or STEAM program, at Saluda Trail Middle also would be unchanged.

Pew said a team would be tasked to develop courses at South Pointe High School for students who would move up from the STEAM program at Saluda Trail Middle. She said South Pointe could become a choice school for the special programs.

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Parents pleased, angered by proposed changes in Rock Hill school choice."