It was a frigid winter morning, but that didn’t stop about 50 parents and children from walking to school Thursday morning to protest their potential reassignment out of Farmington Woods Elementary.

“We are here to show a united front,” said Joy Drew, whose son, second-grader Eric, would move about two miles down the road to Briarcliff Elementary under the school district’s current reassignment proposal.

“We were surprised we were included in [the proposal],” Drew said. “We’re an established part of town. We don’t add to growth at schools.”

According to the district’s reassignment proposal, 132 students would be moved from Farmington Woods to Briarcliff to reduce crowding. The school currently has 876 students enrolled, which is 88 students over capacity. The proposed changes would put them six students under capacity, to a student body of 782. Without the reassignment, district staff say the school’s population would grow to 914 students next year.

Lloyd and Carol Price, residents of nearby Hillsdale Forest, were there Thursday morning to support their daughter and grandchildren. The couple’s daughter, Kim Chestnut, attended Farmington Woods Elementary as a child, and now their grandchildren go to school there too.

“We convinced them to move to our neighborhood so they could go to this school,” Carol Price said.

“And now they want to move our children across town,” said Lloyd Price.

School district staff will present their official recommendations to the Board of Education on Jan. 8. After that, the board will hold three public hearings on Jan. 15, 17 and 24 to get feedback from parents. The location of those meetings has not yet been announced.

Comment online

WCPSS staff will be accepting comments on the draft reassignment plan through Jan. 1 before a final proposal is submitted to Board of Education members on Jan. 8.

To comment online, visit www.wcpss.net/assignment-proposal and locate your school in the dropdown box under “Schools Affected” on the right of the screen. Once on the page for that school, click “Make Comment” on the right of the screen to fill out the comment form. Though online comments are preferred, parents may also write to the Office of Growth and Planning, Wake County Public School System, 3600 Wake Forest Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 or leave a message on the reassignment hotline by calling 501-7998.

Contact Valerie Marino at 460-2604 or vmarino@nando.com.