School district plans to convert special-needs school into ‘migrant resettlement’ facility, county commissioner warns

A school district in North Carolina plans to shut down a special-needs school to convert it into a “newcomers school,” New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise warned Thursday.

New Hanover County Schools announced in November that the district plans to shutter the Career Readiness Academy at Mosley, which serves students with special needs.

According to Scalise, during a meeting last week, the NHC Board of Education and NHC Schools Superintendent Dr. Charles Foust stated that the shuttered school might be replaced with a “newcomers school.” Scalise explained that, despite the misleading name, the school would ultimately amount to a migrant resettlement facility. He slammed the district for attempting to close down the school, forcing its students to relocate to other facilities in the county.

“Mosley is a one-of-a-kind public school in New Hanover County that offers custom-tailored education to local students who require special learning. Newcomers schools may be called schools, but they are more akin to migrant resettlement and assimilation facilities,” Scalise wrote in a recent op-ed published by the Carolina Journal.

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