North Carolina Schools

[A4Disney]

Hi
I'm just trying to figure out the Mooresville area school district.There are Mooresville city schools which they add a special school tax for or the county schools(Iredell).Does anyone know why they do this?Which ones are better etc?
Thank you!

 

[A4Disney]

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[NCRedding]

Can't answer specifically to Mooresville, but we have a separate city school system and a county school system. The additional amount paid in taxes goes to fund our city system. I believe that is the way Mooresville City/ Iredall County works.

Again, I don't know the specifics in Mooresville, but the advantages to our city system include smaller amount of students/higher teacher supplements/neighborhood schools.

Hopefully, someone from the area will be able to answer these questions specific to Mooresville.

 

[hmp2z]

I teach near Mooresville (in Concord now, used to teach in Char-Meck). Generally, the city & county have split, b/c the county doesn't want to deal with the urban problems inherent in city schools, and the county parents don't want their children going to school with "those people." That's definitely the case, in Kannapolis City schools vs. Cabarrus County schools. If you go for the county district, you'll get a more rural feel (Iredell is VERY rural), more homogeneous groups among the kids (i.e. more kids with a similar racial makeup/socioeconomic status). The inner city schools have more diversity, but there are many city schools I wouldn't send kids to on a bet, even with reduced classroom sizes. Usually (not always, because there are some who teach there who are truly dedicated), the city districts get teachers & administrators who are making time there until they can get into the district of their choice. Many of these teachers & administratos are underqualified; I taught in inner city schools for several years, and the ignorance among the faculty was appalling.
So there are trade-offs; you definitely have to reseach specific schools, to know more about each one's situation.
Cheers!
Heather W

 

[tar heel]

That's not true about Mooresville schools. They have the reputation of being excellent schools. Mooresville is a small, high-income town, not an inner city. I don't know much about Iredell County Schools, but I know that Mooresville residents have fought pretty hard to keep their schools separate. It is difficult to merge a system like Mooresville, which has a school district tax (only possible if the voters vote FOR it) with a larger county system that does not have such a tax b/c the per pupil funding for all the schools in a system has to be the same. Bringing the entire county up to the Mooresville level would be very expensive. Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, the location that HAD North Carolina's highest school district tax, recently merged with Orange Schools -- no idea how this is going.

In North Carolina, when there are separate city and county school systems, it usually doesn't mean they split but rather that they have not yet merged. In some places the city schools are the better ones, however. There is political pressure for the mergers -- many politicians would like to see one school system per county and every few years some legislator rumbles about passing a bill that will only fund one per county.

Here in Cabarrus County, there used to be three school systems: Concord, Kannapolis and Cabarrus County. The Concord and county systems combined, but Kannapolis stayed separate. Merging Kannapolis into the county schools comes up every few years and was a very real issue 12-13 years ago when the massive influx of newcomers really started hitting.

In another life, I used to be an education reporter . . .