How Do You Feel About Open Enrollment?
- Thread starter CRF4Dan
- Start date
Ok I was a coach in North Carolina for 28 years and most of my time there was in two places. Winston Salem and Raleigh. One was an open enrollment district (Winston Salem) one was not(Wake county Raleigh). In the open enrollment district as a head coach you had to every year re recruit your kids every year because they could transfer every year if they wanted to. So its a little bit like the wild west down there kids moving all over the place . What it has created is a have and have not district. Schools with many resourced and players and schools with few resources and few players. Now I suffered and benefitted from this system and you have to know how to navigate it to keep kids and get possible new ones to come to your school. The school I coached at Was Parkland Magnet High it was very similar to Henrico High school here. So it was a have not school. It was rough , 100% free and reduced lunch and did not have the funds of other school in the district and anyone who could move out of district did AKA white flight). Our first three years we went 0-11, 0-11, 3-8. I coached against several kids who are now in the NFL(Shy Tuttle, Devine Diablo) that were suppose to be in my district but played at other schools due to choice transfer. After that we somehow pulled off a transfer of a D1 WR recruit to our school. After that we lost no more kids to other schools and gained several players more from neighboring schools we went 7-5, 6-6, 11-2 the last three years. So essentially what this will do will create a few powerhouse schools in the area and many with little or no talent. So being a coach who has coached in this environment if you are a have you will love it , it will benefit you greatly. If you are a have not or a new coach trying to build it will be ultra frustrating and at times heart breaking. The other schooI I was a head coach at was Rolesville (Raleigh) they are not an open district but as we know there are always work arounds in those places and the talent was distributed a little more evenly. Wake county/Raleigh has about 27 high schools but even there you are seeing kids flocking to just a few schools the last couple of years. Overall Choice is bad for the district and will be very harmful to many schools in that district
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It might be a good thing for academics, but for athletics i agree with the previous poster. It will create or exacerbate the have/have not situation. On a state wide level the population centers will have a big advantage over the more rural or smaller population areas IMO. (Especially in C3/4)