WRAL reports this morning that 13,000 Wake County students have applied for magnet schools or other public school options for next year.
But looking at last year’s enrollment, Wake County had 25,506 students whose parents had already made a different choice. While there were 127,049 students in the conventional public schools, there were also 4,969 in charter schools, 14,021 in private schools, and 6,516 being taught at home.
So in other words, today’s news suggests that the parents of one in four Wake County schoolchildren would rather send their kids somewhere other than the place the school district would choose.
Food for thought, that.
UPDATE: I just noticed that WRAL’s headline leaves out the 2329 students trying to move back into schools with a traditional calendar – not just looking for something new and improved, but trying to recover something taken away last year. That makes it 15,202, not “almost 13,000”, that are seeking alternatives within the system.
Fifteen thousand students is bigger than Wilson County’s whole school system.
