The new Richland 2 high-school rezoning plan involving attendance options is gaining traction among parents who say the proposal is innovative and addresses issues of equity and fair distribution of resources and lower-income students at all five high schools.
“It’s better than the previous plans, and it offers options,” said Amelia McKie, a Ridge View High School parent and co-chair of Ridge View’s School Improvement Committee. “And those options seem to be a little bit more equitably disbursed throughout the district.”
If the seven-member board endorses the latest scenario Tuesday night, it could bring to a close a bruising rezoning battle that had the effect of pitting school against school and neighborhood against neighborhood.
McKie still thinks the plan should be tweaked to zone the sprawling Lake Carolina community for Ridge View, with an option to attend Blythewood High School. Under the new plan, Lake Carolina would be zoned for Blythewood, which is farther away geographically, with an option to attend Ridge View.
“I don’t want the school to be diluted,” McKie said. “When you whittle away the school’s population, you whittle away diversity.” She said Lake Carolina parents “just want to stay together. There are a mass of parents who want to remain in the (Ridge View) Scholars Academy; they want to remain in the School for the Arts.”
On the southern end of the district, Suzanne O’Dell, a Richland Northeast High School parent, applauded the newest scenario.
“I do think it works for me. I’m pretty happy with it,” said O’Dell, who stirred others to action after learning the school would receive a majority of the district’s low-income and minority students under an earlier plan.
O’Dell said she has pressed the district for the demographics of the latest plan.
“I still want to see what the impact is on minority isolation,” she said. Parents say the seven-member school board deserves credit for listening to a litany of concerns about the earlier plan, up for a vote Nov. 15, that seemed to create a two-tiered district of affluent and poor high schools.
The proposal stirred state Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Richland, a Richland 2 graduate with a child at Richland Northeast, to enter into the debate. He was joined by several hundred parents, the Columbia Urban League and Steve Morrison, the Columbia lawyer most associated with the funding lawsuit brought against the state by 36 poor school districts along South Carolina’s “Corridor of Shame.”
“I had to listen to my moral compass,” said Lourie, who held lengthy discussions with the community and school board members over the evolving plans. “It appeared we were moving toward two districts in one.”
The debate was bruising, pitting school against school, and often neighborhood against neighborhood. The Spring Valley neighborhood, alarmed that it would lose its longtime option to attend Spring Valley High School and be zoned only for Richland Northeast, sent out a “for your eyes only” email that had the effect of galvanizing Richland Northeast parents.
Neighborhood leaders acknowledged the tenor of the email was unfortunate, saying all they were doing was seeking was to be zoned to a school, Spring Valley, that was closest in proximity and had many ties with the subdivision.
But it stirred community discussion, which was a good thing, said Aimee Stewart, who said she had paid little attention to the remap plan as it unfolded.
“I thank them for doing those emails,” Stewart, the mother of three children, including a 10th-grader at Richland Northeast. “We, by and large, did not expect to be part of the rezoning process. We weren’t reading those proposals.
“I know that is no excuse at all, but it was a very enlightening moment. I definitely think it was the catalyst” to a broader discussion.
Gerald Owen, vice chair of the School Improvement Council at Richland Northeast, also worried that the controversy left the impression that his school did not want disadvantaged students.
“Parents, students and staff are not upset with or about students that were to be zoned to RNH that live in poverty,” he said. But he said they were concerned about the impact of the high concentration of poverty on the current programs, without additional resources.
“Research over the last two decades has shown that such a large population being located on one campus would be detrimental to all the students on campus,” he said in an email. Under the new proposal, Richland Northeast will remain at about 1,450 students, the smallest of the five schools.
Now, Lourie believes the five high schools will be able to offer unique programs that could appeal to every parent in the district.
“It’s what I’m calling ‘the new Richland 2.’”
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