Gea) meeting with Magnet parent =e gjrankin to: Debra Goldman 01/10/2010 08:55 PM History: This message has been replied to Ms. Goldman- I was hoping to speak with you re: meeting with a group of Magnet parents. We had organizing a similar meeting with John Tedesco last week to hear hie views on how Magnets fit into the community based school model and we would be very interested in hearing your views. Our past meeting had over 150 parents attend and it was an engaging discussion. Please let me know if you are interested in speaking with us. Thanks in advance for your time. Sincerely, Erin Rankin& ai re-evaluate our assignment REREF _eurrutina’ to: Debra Goldman ovrao1oo14a PM Dear Board Members: I am a member of Node 597.0, which is made up of residents of Carpenter Village in Cary. Currently our base elementary school is Carpenter Elementary, our base Middle School is East Cary and our base High School is Panther Creek. We have two fundamental issues with our Middle School assignment, East Cary, that warrants the Board’s immediate attention for the 2010-2011 school year First, our home, which is located in the heart of our node, is 8.54 miles or 15 minutes (according to mapquest) from East Cary. This distance requires our children to get on the bus everyday at 6:15 am in order to take a 45+ minute bus ride to school each way. This is unfair to our students, given that there are two other options that are located % the distance and travel time compared to East Cary. They are: Mills Park Middle School, which is 3.7 miles or 8 minutes, and Davis Drive Middle School, which is 4.34 miles or 7 minutes away. As I am sure you are aware, studies show that lack of adequate sleep has a direct negative correlation to academic performance. In addition, volunteering at the school and allowing our children to stay after school for activities is nearly impossible for our families. ‘The second, and possibly larger, concern we have is that our neighborhood is the only neighborhood that is going from East Cary for Middle school to Panther Creek for High School. This makes it very difficult for our children to form relationships because, unless their friends live in our neighborhood, they will more than likely NOT go to High School with ANY of them. As any of us who remember Middle School know, building solid and consistent relationships is critical at this stage of a child's life. We have all assumed that our node would be reassigned to the new Mills Park Middle School, which is the closest of all Middle Schools and a feeder school to Panther Creek. We also thought that there would be a new reassignment plan this year in time for Mille Park's opening next year. We did not realize that it was part of the three year plan for reassignment last year and that we were, again, overlooked. ‘The families of Carpenter Village in node $97.0 were in strong support at election time of the new board members, with hopes that their emphasis on neighborhood schools would help our situation. Please re-evaluate our assignment and take into consideration the following two proposed solutions that are in the best interest of our children’s education and quality of life. The two proposed solutions for the 2010-2011 School Yea Reassign node 597.0 to Mille Park Middle School (3.7 miles) and continue to assign us to Panther Creek High School (2.2 miles) OR Reassign node 597.0 to Davis Drive Middle School (4.3 miles) and Green Hope High School (1.5 miles) Thank you for your consideration, Laura kutina