School reassignment is nothing new to Philip Pfeifer of Cary. His son and daughter, now 23 and 24, dealt with uncertainty and new schools beginning in 1989, eventually ending up at Wiley Elementary School in Raleigh, an international magnet.

Now history has repeated itself, and Pfeifer’s MacArthur Park home of 14 years, within six-tenths of a mile of Davis Drive Elementary, is full of the same uncertainties.

Pfeifer’s son Jackson, 7, plays with a tight group of six boys his age in the neighborhood.

“The Town of Cary is building a trail to Bond Park [from MacArthur Park],” Pfeifer said. “I had envisioned them riding bikes together to the park as they got older.”

Last week’s final reassignment decision means that Jackson and his friends will attend the new, year-round Laurel Park Elementary in 2008-09. Pfeifer explained that different tracks and varied decisions about whether to attend the new school may make group bike trips to Bond Park an unfulfilled fantasy.

Michelle Henderson lives in Hampstead Park. Her children haven’t even started elementary school yet, but after reading about registering her almost-5-year-old, Sophia, for kindergarten at Weatherstone Elementary, Henderson got involved. She banded together with neighbors to speak out about reassignment after she realized it wasn’t Weatherstone, which is within walking distance, but Briarcliff that her children would be attending.

“Weatherstone was going to be convenient — my husband and I commute together to [Research Triangle Park] — we could drop off Sophia before we drop off our 3-year-old at daycare,” Henderson said. “But Briarcliff is two-and-a-half miles in the other direction. Also, my husband’s sister was originally going to pick up Sophia after school, but she won’t be able to get to Briarcliff in time because her child’s school ends at a conflicting time.” Both Pfeifer and Henderson feel frustration at what seems for them an inevitable outcome of reassignment this year.

Pfeifer has put out fliers, spoken at reassignment hearings and sent e-mails. “There is no action we can take at this point,” he said. “We don’t know the track, we don’t know the start time of the new school, and we don’t know what programs will be available when school is not in session.”

Pfeifer, who works as an assistant pastor and attends graduate school, must coordinate transportation and childcare with his wife, Gwen, who works at Duke University. The early start time (7:45 a.m.) at Davis Drive Elementary means that no before-school care is necessary for Jackson.

Most frustrating to Pfeifer is a statement he read recently that the Wake County Board of Education had no research to support moving lower-income students out of their base schools.

“What they said is that the policy ‘wasn’t harming them,’” Pfeifer said. “What about the harm this is doing to our kids? I have to wonder: Where’s the benefit for anyone?”

Henderson wonders the same thing. Like Pfeifer, Henderson became active, speaking at hearings and writing letters. Like many parents, Henderson opposes redistribution based on free- and reduced-lunch quotas. Of the 21 western Wake County elementary schools impacted by reassignment, only one, West Lake Elementary, will not have children moved based on changing free- and reduced-lunch percentages.

Henderson offered an alternative in her letter to the board: “It is our opinion that you should just dedicate a higher percentage of the school’s resources to schools with a higher percentage of low-income students. Provide these students with the lower teacher/student ratios, tutors and after-school activities that their parents can’t afford.

That’s what they need. And that is what parents of all income levels want.”

With both Briarcliff and their year-round option, Adams Elementary, in the opposite direction of their commute, Henderson said they are looking into transfer options [back to Weatherstone] and strongly considering private schools in the area.