This paper is an opening effort at dialogue with community and Board. Indeed, the reason there has been a version 2.0 and 3.0 is because of the incorporation of ideas offered by others. Anyone who is interested may e-mail the author. For the most part it is not designed as a brief for or against any particular resolution. It’s designed to pose some issues and options that can be pursued, modified or rejected.

Parameters and implementation.

It appears to be the Board’s desire to contribute, at least in some way, to the resolution of the boundaries issues. Moreover, it appears to be the Board’s preference to participate at the level of parameters, policy and values rather than at the level of detailed line drawing, or implementation.

But none of this need be the case. The Board could (a) stay out of it altogether; just hand it off to the Superintendent with the direction that he use his best judgment. Or it could (b) skip over the policy questions and go directly to the line drawing.

Short term and long range solutions.

From one perspective there is a conflict between long range solutions, and short-term, Band-Aid fixes. There is even basis for concern that a short-term solution may make even more intractable the problems to be confronted by the Board when it gets around to long-term planning.

On the other hand, there is an equal and more immediate concern that the best not become the enemy of the good. In other words, that the District confronts emergencies that need immediate fixes; by the time the long-range plan is announced and in place the current problems will have become even more serious.

Perhaps there is an alternative to these extremes.

What if the Board was to provide an integrated effort at both?

That is, go ahead and provide now the parameters and values for the boundaries, the allocation of children to schools, that the Board believes would be its ideal goal a full 10 years from now. Provide at least a rough guide of a map showing what that District would look like. Because it would not take effect for a decade all students currently enrolled in elementary schools, and almost all families, would have no personal reason to object. (The exception would be those young parents who plan to have more children and would like them to be able to go to the same schools their older siblings once attended.)

The short-term solutions would address acute over-crowding – perhaps based on two or three-year projections. Those adjustments could be made in ways that would take into account the kinds of considerations raised by Member Dale Shultz: minimizing the number of school moves of any individual child, keeping siblings together, avoidance of distant bussing of the child who lives across from a school, consideration of optimum/maximum capacity of buildings, and so forth.

In brief, in ways designed to minimize the number and impact of changes on District parents and students.

But (a) these incremental changes could then be done against a backdrop of the ten-year plan, and in ways not inconsistent with its goals or that will make their achievement even more difficult. There would be some guidance for the interim.

(b) To the extent new situations arise – new housing developments, perhaps some day additional schools – there would be a plan in place to provide guidance regarding the boundaries toward which the District would be evolving.

(c) It will put the community on notice as to where the District is headed. This will both alleviate parents’ anxiety regarding unknown possible changes, and provide a way of planning, say, future home buying.

(d) The fact that future Boards will have not only the power, but perhaps good reason, to revise the ten-year plan from time to time does not alter the benefit of having such a plan in place at all times. It can never be anything more than simply the best we are able to do.

Parameters and values.

Just to get the discussion going, here is a possible approach to long term parameters and values.

This list presumes that there is much more to "boundaries" than just drawing lines on a map.

One of the Board's, and community's, top considerations is (or ought to be) the impact of boundary decisions on the quality of education, and life, for the District's students.

At this point, without the benefit of more expert input, the nature of that potential impact may not be clear. Intuitively, however, the following might be considerations:

(a) the educational component and benefit of spending one's elementary school years with as diverse a student population as possible, considering such things as ethnic, racial, religious, place of origin, and socio-economic-educational background of students and their parents,

(b) the social benefit of knowing classmates who are also available as playmates in one's neighborhood, and

(c) the quality of life benefit of either walking to school, or spending the minimum time possible on school buses.

Against that background, here would be a possible way of thinking through parameters for long-term boundary policy and goals.

1. Calculate the optimum/maximum capacity of each elementary school. Total those numbers.

2. Calculate the projected total elementary school enrollment for the entire District.

3. Calculate the percentage that 2 is of 1. That percentage times the optimum/maximum capacity for any given building becomes its base enrollment.

4. Presumably 3 should create roughly equivalent class sizes from one building to another.

5. Consider the possibility of a formula (perhaps analogous to that for funding special education students) that would result in a reduction of class size for those teachers with low income, or special education, students in their classes. (It is not now clear whether teachers would welcome this recognition of the added responsibility such students impose, or would reject the idea – because it would mean, of course, that some teachers would have larger absolute class sizes than others.) If such a formula is used (and there is not an equal distribution of such students) that would require a tweaking of a building’s base enrollment and boundaries.

6. Draw rough lines around each school, based on current and projected population distribution, (a) with outer edges that are as roughly equal distant from the building as is possible given the present location of other elementary schools, and (b) will provide a number of students approximating the building’s base enrollment.

7. Hopefully, “base enrollment” numbers will already be low enough (compared with the building’s capacity) to allow for some increased enrollment over time, accommodation of siblings, or new families moving into the area. However, to the extent that demographic projections indicate that some areas are likely to increase – or decrease – in numbers of elementary age children presumably the base enrollment numbers would be tweaked up or down accordingly to avoid the need for additional changes soon thereafter.

8. Estimate, for each building, the number of (a) low-income (i.e., free and reduced cost lunch) children, and (b) special education children with special needs that will result from 6.

9. Either (a) re-draw the lines, or (b) provide for bussing to provide an equivalent percentage of 8 within each building (give or take a couple of percentage points).

10. Explore with the community and teachers the potential interest in alternatives to the conventional K-6 organization of elementary schools we are now using. Many of these options might simultaneously improve the quality of education and reduce the problems of school overcrowding. Some that now come to mind include:

(a) Magnet schools. As the name suggests, a magnet school offers parents and students a special program of such quality that it attracts additional students into a school they would not otherwise attend. The benefits and consequences of such a decision go far beyond the impact on boundaries and attendance. But it is an approach school districts have sometimes used to, among other things, alleviate the very kinds of overcrowding problems we now confront. For example, given our District's interest, support and success with music and the arts, a magnet school of the arts (e.g., music, dance, drama, graphic art) might be quite popular. (Of course, science and math, foreign language, or even athletics, could be the focus of such a school.) If the community's response is positive, and there is a building that, in order to reach its base enrollment will have to draw from a disproportionately large geographical area, we might consider the possibility of making it a magnet school.

(b) Middle schools. There is much debate, pro and con, about the relative merits of junior high schools and middle schools. There are also many definitions, and qualities, associated with each. So "middle school" can mean different things to different educators. This is not the place to explore the definitions and arguments in depth. One component of one set of concepts, however, is the idea of putting grades six, seven and eight together in a single building. And one of the obvious consequences of doing so would be its impact on overcrowding in any given elementary school. If a school has roughly equal numbers of students in the seven classes of kindergarten through sixth grade, and the sixth graders are moved into a middle school elsewhere, obviously that reduces by one-seventh the number of students in the elementary school.

(c) Age-grouping schools. There is no magic, or compulsion, associated with the age groupings we are now using in our elementary schools (ages five through twelve). Other districts in this country, and other nations' practices, demonstrate the range of variations that seem to work well. Indeed, within our own District there are elementary schools that combine what, in other schools, are treated as separate "grades." As with middle schools, there are a wide variety of ways of doing this, and almost as many arguments pro and con about their relative merits. Such alternatives can have an impact on practices regarding "social promotion" or acceleration of students. Once again, this is not the place to explore those issues. The limited focus here is on the impact of such decisions on the allocation of students to buildings. For example, we might have buildings assigned as exclusively kindergarten buildings; others might be limited to first, second and third graders; others (if sixth graders are not put into middle schools) for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. One not insignificant consequence of this approach would be the impact on bussing. At present bussing falls disproportionately on low income children. Age-grouping would not totally resolve this problem, but to the extent bussing is viewed as a burden it would spread it a little more equitably.

11. Once these or other parameters and values have been set by the Board the line drawing task can be left to the Superintendent. The Board might, or might not, want to see the final map before it is implemented – not to draw lines, but to confirm that those drawn conform with its parameters and values.

Conclusion.

This is not so much a set of specific proposals as it is a basis for discussion; a starting point to be torn apart and put back together. It's premised on the assumption that it is easier to begin a discussion with something on paper than nothing.