Wake County staff outline public feedback stressing proximity and stability ahead of draft assignment maps

District staff presented a draft public engagement summary on assignment planning and new‑school openings, telling the Wake County Board that families consistently raised proximity to school, cohort continuity and stability as top priorities.

Susan Rice, who led the briefing, said the district revamped its assignment‑planning web pages, ran in‑person sessions paired with virtual alternatives and hosted four online thought exchanges between May 1 and May 27. She reported 31 in‑person attendees, roughly 114 live virtual attendees and 374 unique online participants who posted 235 thoughts through May 25, with digital asset views exceeding 4,800. Rice said staff will add AI‑supported interviews and aims to complete those by July 19 so summaries can inform a September 1 initial draft for the board.

The engagement produced repeated themes around neighborhood continuity, resource parity for new schools (course offerings, athletics and extracurriculars), feeder patterns that keep classmates together, and concerns about overcrowding in long‑impacted northwest campuses. Rice said the district is hearing stronger calls to ‘‘do changes once’’ and then preserve multi‑year stability rather than repeatedly reassigning students.

Board members probed how comments were counted and integrated. Rice clarified that the slides showing ‘‘one of 168’’ referred to counts of comments within an exchange (for example, the Morrisville thought exchange contributed 168 of the 235 posted thoughts shown on one slide). She also said staff combine in‑person, virtual and online inputs for holistic analysis rather than treating them in isolation.

Several trustees raised region‑specific concerns. Members from southeast Raleigh asked about calendar alignment and magnet access; one board member noted that families in southeast Raleigh sometimes lack practical access to magnet programs and urged a review of socioeconomic determinations used in magnet priority. Trustees also asked staff to revisit specific schools such as Hillburn Academy (K–8) as part of any middle‑school balancing conversations.

Rice said the draft engagement summary is posted to the district website, emphasized the report is a first installment with typos expected, and asked trustees to send follow‑up questions to staff. The board set expectations for staff to deliver more granular participation and comments breakdowns and to return with the initial draft recommendations on September 1 for additional public feedback.