Home Care In Holly Grove, NC

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- When the pandemic hit Karen Goeke-Austin made the decision to homeschool her oldest daughter, Katie.

"I was really nervous about her going back to public school in 6th grade because she was so far behind and the schools just weren't catching her up," Goeke-Austin told ABC11 last August.

The transition to a remote working position gave Goeke-Austin the chance to finally try out homeschooling, something she always wanted to do. The family called the school Mountain View Academy.

"I know in our particular case, she had somewhat of a traumatic elementary experience and so, she really needed these two years to kind of recover emotionally and then also kind of regain some of the skills that she hadn't been getting in public, so we did a lot of outside tutoring and a lot more focused interventions with her during the last two years, and now that she's gotten caught up to her peers, we feel more comfortable sending her back to public (school)," Goeke -Austin said.

After two years, the family decided to close Mountain View Academy.

"We enjoyed our homeschool experience. We really did. There were a lot of benefits, a lot of perks. There were some struggles here and there. And so now that she's back in public, some of those struggles have gone away. It was tricky for her to always be in charge of her own learning. And because I work a full-time job, I couldn't always be there to answer her questions," Goeke-Austin said.

Katie is now an eighth-grader at Holly Grove Middle School and six weeks into the new school year. She said she's enjoying science and math and all the new friends she's made.

She is one of the thousands of families who are now opting out of home school.

Close to 31,000 more students participated in homeschooling during the 2020-2021 school year than did in the year before, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Administration. But, like Katie, many of those students chose not to make that schooling option permanent. State data showed that 19,000 fewer students were enrolled in home school last year.

However, while homeschool numbers decline, public schools across the state are not reporting a large uptick.

Only 2,600 more students were enrolled in public schools during the 2021-22 school year compared to the year before. Across North Carolina, 50,000 fewer students were enrolled in public school last year than the year before the pandemic, representing a 4% decrease.

Locally, public school districts in Wake (-1%), Durham (-3%) and Cumberland County (-4%) are also reporting a decrease in the number of students enrolled.

At the same time, public school districts are reporting a drop, enrollment at charter schools across the state is booming. Nearly 20% more students attended a charter school last year compared to the 2018-2019 school year.

Wake County ranked third in the state for the largest increase in charter school enrollment last year, according to state data.

The various school options make planning for public school districts a challenge.

Wake County School Board member Christine Kushner also said charter schools particularly can also affect some of the district's both short-term and long-term planning.

"The difficulty in planning, I think, is also a problem with using public resources and tax dollars efficiently. So that's one of my increasing concerns is that the charter school movement with its expansion and closures and unpredictability is straining already strained public resources and that should be a concern for every taxpayer in North Carolina," Kushner said.

About 20 new charter schools have been added during the past three years and a number have been forced to suddenly close by the state, some for 'financial irregularities.'

Kushner said she is also concerned by the lower standard of accountability charter schools are held to and about their impact on the make-up of student populations.

"Charter schools have never really scaled to include all children. I think that's an important point to make and that charter schools aren't looking to educate every child. And for taxpayers, for public dollars that are becoming increasingly scarce, I think it's important for us to be efficient with those dollars and fragmenting our school systems are creating two-tiered systems," Kushner said.

A previous ABC11 investigation uncovered that 60% of charter schools have higher portions of white students enrolled than their local public school district.

The latest state data does show the biggest change in enrollment is among white students. Nine percent fewer white students are enrolled in public schools than in the year leading up to the pandemic.

Another concern is the financial impact a slipping student population could have on public school districts.

State funding for districts is usually tied to enrollment numbers. For the last few years, state leaders have not used this data to determine funding, but this year public school districts' enrollment will matter again. If districts report a significant drop in the number of students they serve, cuts to resources may have to be made.

It's still too soon to know how districts will be impacted as initial enrollment numbers aren't released until a few weeks after school resumes. Public school leaders like Kushner are hopeful enrollment starts to stabilize.

"There's a lot of uncertainty, but we have to face it with as much optimism and proactive work as we can," she said.

A new elementary school in Apex will join the list of crowded Wake County school campuses put under enrollment caps that will keep some newly arriving families from attending them.

The Wake County school board approved Tuesday putting enrollment caps on 25 schools through the 2023-24 school year. The newest school on the list is Apex Friendship Elementary, which school leaders say is already facing significant crowding after opening in August.

The need to run buses to send students to overflow schools will add to the district’s challenges during a time of acute driver shortages. But school leaders say capping is “the best of several bad options” with alternatives including massive student reassignment and converting schools to a year-round calendar.

“Capping has a lot of negatives,” said school board vice chair Chris Heagarty. “When we cap, we take families who are moving into an area that have made a decision, moved right next to the school and because we’re overcapacity, we’re sending them to a further, more distant school.”

The new enrollment cap at Apex Friendship Elementary goes into effect immediately. The overflow school will be Baucom Elementary, which will temporarily move to a new location while its campus is renovated.

“I am saddened to see that we are capping a brand-new school that opened at 80% capacity,” said school board chair Lindsay Mahaffey. “But I’m hopeful knowing that in the Apex and Holly Springs areas we have a few elementary schools that will be coming to provide relief.”

Caps will continue at 19 elementary schools, two middle schools and three high schools.

Baucom Elementary will no longer serve as one of the overflow schools for Apex Elementary. Salem Elementary will no longer serve as one of the overflow schools for Olive Chapel Elementary.

The cap will end at Sycamore Creek Elementary in Raleigh now that a new elementary school has opened in the area.

Enrollment caps are a way to shift the burden of reducing school crowding onto newcomers.

When a capped school reaches an enrollment limit, families who weren’t living in the attendance area by a certain date are assigned to a more distant school that has space. This school year, 837 students are capped out of the school they’d normally attend.

Wake also has to deal with how the state sets class sizes at 18 students in kindergarten, 16 in first grade and 17 students in second- and third-grades.

Most of the capped elementary schools are in fast-growing western and southwestern Wake.

“I know that staff does everything they can to try to come up with the best possible recommendations here,” Heagarty said. “Unfortunately, these recommendations will disadvantage a lot of our families. But at this point I don’t know that we have a better option.”

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Caps will continue at 19 schools with the addition of Apex Friendship.

Baucom Elementary will no longer serve as one of the overflow schools for Apex Elementary. Salem Elementary will no longer serve as one of the overflow schools for Olive Chapel Elementary.

MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Caps will continue at 2 schools.

HIGH SCHOOLS

Caps will continue at 3 schools.

This story was originally published February 21, 2023, 8:37 PM.

Bearing a warm smile, Principal Kathy Knezevic of Holly Grove Elementary walked through the halls of her school and greeted every student and teacher she passed with a friendly hello.

“Hey, Principal K!” they all chimed back.

Holly Grove Elementary School, located in Holly Springs, has served as a year-round Wake County public school for more than a decade. Knezevic has been the head principal for three years, managing more than 1,100 children and 80 staff members.

Knezevic, who immigrated to the United States from Greece at the age of 17, prides herself on her deep-rooted passion for education. She initially wanted to pursue economics, but after her mother told her she would be a wonderful teacher, she switched paths.

“Being Greek — the Greeks started the education system — so I think it was instilled in me growing up that the only thing, if anything, that we can give to our kids is education,” said Knezevic.

After receiving her masters in school administration from North Carolina State University, she worked in three schools in Wake County before starting at Holly Grove: Davis Drive Elementary, Mills Park Elementary, and Washington Elementary.

“Every school I’ve been in in Wake County has been very different as far as the demographics and the needs, but just as challenging and wonderful as the students learn and grow,” Knezevic said.

The nontraditional calendar has been a challenge for Knezevic in her three years at Holly Grove. The school is on a year-round schedule, which means there is no three-month summer vacation, but instead shorter breaks are interspersed in a 12-month school calendar. The school year starts in mid-July and runs through June.

“We’re going 12 months out of the year,” said Knezevic. “By the time you get the results of what you put in place, you have to look ahead and move on. For traditional schools, they have the summer to reflect but [here] it’s not like that. I tell my staff that we’re human, we’re going to make mistakes, but we always aim to make mistakes in the best interest of the kids, and it’s all going to wash out in the end.”

Holly Grove is also, like most schools, challenged by bullying. According to StopBullying.gov, about 49 percent of American students in grades 4-12 report being bullied in the past month.

At Holly Grove, bullying is “treated very seriously,” said Knezevic. “[Holly Grove] is a PBIS — positive behavior intervention school — so we try to intervene early so there is more awareness of what behaviors are not acceptable. We have a zero bullying policy. We have assemblies we do with the kids, and I have two wonderful counselors that go into the classrooms with the kids and do lessons on what’s acceptable and what’s not, and in cases where it does still exist, we take it very seriously. We call the parents and we tell them, and we have consequences for that because it’s just not okay.”

Despite these challenges, Knezevic still looks forward to each day as Holly Grove’s principal. “I love what I do. I think this is me. I get up happy in the morning that I’m going to work.”

Knezevic said there was a moment she knew she was in the right career path after a parent asked her to help fill out a form to enroll her child in school.

“Afterwards, she told me, ‘I’m illiterate,’ and she couldn’t read the registration form for her kid, to fill it in,” Knezevic said. “And I just — my gosh — I know multiple languages, and it’s not even my mother language, and there are people that can’t pick up a newspaper and can’t read to fill out applications for jobs, and that just kind of solidified for me the importance of education.”

Knezevic said that literacy helps build the foundation that makes her so passionate about working in elementary schools.

“It’s all about foundation…making sure that my babies, when they leave here in fifth grade, are solid when they go into middle school,” she said. “So far, the feedback we have from the middle school is that all our kids are very successful, even the kids that have struggled here. And it’s all about growth, and I know that we get a grade every year, but last year our school was, for the first time, an A-plus school for Wake County — one of six schools — so we’re very proud of it.”

She said the exciting part of her job is that each day she comes into work not knowing what to expect from the day.

“Our day is very fluid, very changing, because we deal with babies and sometimes it’s days full of discipline and sometimes it’s days full of parent meetings, sometimes — we don’t have very many quiet days, but once in a while, we have those too — and you know, we’ll take it,” Knezevic said. “It’s a busy place.”

She has what she calls a “meat and potatoes” way of managing her teachers. She does not micromanage.

“My philosophy is, when I come in for an announced observation, it’s like I’m coming to your house for dinner,” Knezevic said. “And when you know I’m coming, I expect the china, the silver, crystal, you know, five-course meal. When I’m unannounced, I want meat and potatoes. I want to come in and see what you do every day for those babies, and I’m a firm believer that this is sacred, what we do, and I don’t take it lightly.”

Knezevic believes that the best way to combat any challenges in the school is to “getting the right people on your team.”

Knezevic says she always looks for passion in her staff, saying, “You can teach people the curriculum; you can’t teach people to love kids or be excited making sure that their kids grow. That has always been my driving force. I think the rest takes care of itself.”

Assistant Principal Nichole McCullers said Knezevic is a joy to work with.

“She is amazing, and the kids love her — especially her frequent flyers,” McCullers said.

Knezevic’s “frequent flyers” are a group of boys who normally have problems behaving throughout the school day. Each day at recess, Knezevic takes a walk around the track outside with them and asks them about their day. Other students have noticed the group and latched on as well.

After one lap, one of the boys said, “Can we walk one more Principal ‘K’?”

She said her plan for improving Holly Grove is to have more interaction between teachers and parents.

“Even with us here, we get busy with teaching and meetings and grades, everything that we do all day, and I don’t think we do our part to reach out to the parents and say, ‘Hey, so and so had a fantastic day today,” Knezevic said. “I think that the parents — you know, every time the phone rings and they see Wake County Public Schools, and they’re just, ‘Ugh,’ you know, they get that feeling — so, we want to change that.”

Knezevic’s job is not always focused solely on education.

“We have had losses of a child, somebody’s child,” Knezevic said. “We’ve had losses of husbands. Parents and extended family is one thing — that’s the progression of life — but having to deal with an infant’s death or a husband’s untimely death, that was one of the hardest. But it brought us more together as a group, as a community.”

Knezevic said she wakes up every morning looking forward to seeing her babies the most.

“I tell my staff and my PTA that I have two kids of my own but I’ve been blessed with almost 1,200 kids here, and I take it very seriously that they get the best education possible, that they are equipped for whatever the future holds for them,” she said.

Principals 2017 Principals

Allie Mobley is a senior at the UNC -Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism from Wake Forest, North Carolina. She has written for the Carteret County News-Times and The Daily Tar Heel. She recently interned with NBCUniversal and is hoping to pursue a career in marketing after graduating.

Janiece Dilts will become just the sixth principal to lead Broughton High School since 1970 when she takes the helm of the historic Raleigh high school next month.

The Wake County school system announced Tuesday night that Dilts, the principal of Holly Grove Middle School in Holly Springs, will transfer to Broughton on Jan. 3. Dilts said she had to jump at the chance to lead what’s considered by some people to be the flagship high school in Raleigh and Wake County.

“Whenever you enter a school that has a reputation like Broughton, there’s a healthy respect that you want to honor while working to create new traditions,” Dilts said in an interview Wednesday as she drove to Broughton to meet the staff. “I’m humbled and respect the strong leadership that’s been there.”

Broughton, which opened in 1929 near what is now the Village District, has educated some of Raleigh’s most prominent families. It’s the oldest high school in Raleigh still being used.

Broughton has enjoyed unusually stable school leadership. Turnover among high school principals is much more common at other schools.

Dilts will take over for Elena Ashburn, who has been Broughton’s principal since early 2017. Ashburn worked to make Broughton more inclusive and was recognized as the 2021 North Carolina Principal of the Year.

Ashburn is leaving Broughton to become the school district’s Central Area Superintendent.

It wasn’t always Dilts’ intention to become a high school principal.

Dilts, 45, started her education career in 2004 in Florida teaching middle school and high school English. She relocated to Wake County in 2008 to teach English at Holly Springs High School.

Dilts said her original plan was to spend her entire career as a classroom teacher. But over time she wanted to have more of an impact than just on her own students.

She credits Tim Locklair, who was Holly Springs High’s principal at the time, with encouraging her to consider a career as an administrator. Dilts served as an administrative intern under Locklair, who is now the superintendent of Moore County Schools.

Dilts went on to become an assistant principal at Millbrook High School in Raleigh. She joined Holly Grove Middle in 2014 as an assistant principal before becoming its principal in 2018.

Once she became an administrator, Dilts said she knew she wanted to lead a high school.

“You can’t replace the intrinsic value of seeing students walk across the stage at graduation because that’s literally what every educator is looking for when kids enter kindergarten,” Dilts said.

Dilts lives in Raleigh with her husband and two children. She already has firsthand knowledge of Broughton families from her son playing on a Raleigh baseball club.

She will be paid a salary of $124,875 to lead the 2,100-student high school located on St. Mary’s Street.

Dilts knows that she’ll have many eyes looking on her, including the many Broughton alumni who are still involved in the school.

“It’s a humbling experience to serve in Wake County’s flagship school,” she said.

A Wake County School is trying to calm parents after they sent out a letter explaining that their children may have to switch schedules in crowded year-round schools.

HOLLY SPRINGS, North Carolina (WTVD) -- A Wake County School is trying to calm parents after they sent out a letter explaining that their children may have to switch schedules in crowded year-round schools.

Holly Grove Elementary School administrators are blaming state-mandated class size caps for the sudden switch.

A letter was sent home Monday afternoon letting parents know they had 24 hours to consider switching tracks.

Parents feel there should have been more notice.

"My kids are in 4th and 5th grade," said Holly Springs parent Stacy Barnes. "They've been on the same track with the same group of kids since kindergarten. And now you're telling parents you have to make this decision in 24 hours if they want to move their kid from everything they've known."

Principal Kathy Knezevic said in the letter that went home with students, "We completely share your frustration and the impact it may have on your family; however, due to constraints beyond our control, there is no alternative."

Knezevic also said she will accommodate parents who have already planned summer vacations.

She said, "We will work with your child to help him/her make up any work missed due to absences from a planned vacation."

Such accommodations might help the Boyle family. They have already booked a trip to New England for the summer.

Libby Boyle, 9, is a rising third-grader at Holly Grove and is tracked out right now.

Her mother Beth did not volunteer for a track change and hopes her daughter will be spared.

"It's unfortunate, kids are going to have to get moved," said Boyle. "The alternative is having huge classes, and they're (educators) trying their best to spread everybody out so everybody has an equal learning environment, and I get that."

Boyle said this will be her daughter's third move in two years.

"It would be another adjustment," she said. "Luckily, she's the type of kid that looks to make new friends so it wouldn't be horrible but it would be another inconvenience."

The Wake County School District tells ABC11 Holly Grove's situation is unique.

A spokesperson explains there are a lot of kids on some tracks, and not enough on others.

The principal is trying to balance out the number to meet state requirements. Even with the changes, Holly Grove will have to hire two new teachers.

ABC11 asked the Wake County School District if a lottery system would be put in place if there is a lack of volunteers willing to switch.

"Not necessarily," responded WCPSS spokesperson Lisa Luten. "There are many ways to solve this challenge. That's only one possible way out of many."