The board and Wake County Public School System employees held a two-hour work session Tuesday before the vote to go over the 117 page reassignment plan.
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The plan was already in its final stage and had gone through surveys, public comments and two additional drafts.
Thousands of students at 21 different schools will be affected by the reassignment. Board members said it will relieve capped and overcrowded schools, address historical assignment areas and increase transportation efficiency.
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In addition the plan helps fill students into the new Woods Creek Elementary School in Holly Springs when it opens next year.
However, not all parents are happy about the coming changes.
"I feel so sorry and it's heartbreaking," parent Subba Reddy Madireddy said. "If they put families first, they wouldn't have taken this decision."
In addition to changing school assignments for more than 1,000 students, one elementary school will switch from a traditional calendar to a year-round calendar: Pleasant Grove Elementary School.
"This will impact single parents, parents who are both working, immigrant parents if they want to travel internationally."
Board members said the decision to make the changes was difficult.
"Everyone wants a solution where they can go to the most approximate school and we tried to do that before with capping, the expensive capping the bus and efficiencies, we capping letters from from town to stop capping," one school board member said.
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