The USD 383 school board has approved on first reading new boundaries for its elementary and middle schools for the upcoming school year.
The board voted 6-1 to accept the redistricting committee’s option 4, which allows students living along Scenic and Ledgestone Drives as well as Stone Pointe to stay in Manhattan instead of being bussed to Ogden.
Assistant Superintendent Eric Reid says the difficult nature of meeting priorities set forth by both the district and the public, balancing demographics and building utilization, came at the cost of sacrificing other priorities, such as keeping neighborhoods intact and contiguous attendance areas.
“The schools are a resource and they’re an investment that we’ve made over the years. So then we’re bringing more and more in as population pushes to the edges, and that’s not unusual but it creates an extreme challenge, especially when you’re looking at demographics. To balance demographics, we’d have to take a chunk out of there and send them out and then take a chunk out of another neighborhood and bring them in,” he said.
Board member Karla Hagemeister cited existing issues some facilities have had with managing space, and that going forward many locations may grapple with finding appropriate areas for interventions and meetings.
“Our social workers are doubled up, our school counselors are doubled up. There’s just not enough extra space for some of the interventions that need to happen at our elementary schools especially. I could really visualize that if there is extra space, it’s not going to last,” she said.
Reid says the desire to not retroactively transfer students after changes are implemented is not optimal, as maintaining staffing and managing class sizes will continue to be an issue.
“We’re going to put the appropriate amount of staff in each building with a little growth in cushion, and be able to take transfers to an acceptable level. What I don’t want to see, and my principals know this, do we have to take all the transfers and get back up to 27, 28 in a class? No. We have to protect that and that’s one reason we’ve gone through this painful process,” he said.
Hagemeister adds that a factor heavily considered was how communities would grow into their respective zones and in some cases outpace the current predictions.
“It falls into that category also of filling one space takes from another space in the sense that there are growth areas within that Oliver Brown (area) and there’s grow within the blue (section of the map). They’re both areas that are growing, and are both growing pretty rapidly, I think more so than we can see on the map,” she said.
No schools in the plan would be above 94 percent high capacity by year five of the redistricting plan. The boundaries also create a more true east/west split for feeding elementary students into the two middle schools, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson students who will now feed into Anthony Middle School. Students from Amanda Arnold, Frank V. Bergman, Marlatt and Ogden will also feed into Anthony. Eisenhower Middle School will receive students from the new Oliver Brown Elementary school as well as Bluemont, Lee, Northview and Theodore Roosevelt Schools.
Board member Brandy Santos was the lone board member to vote against the boundaries, but didn’t specify a reasoning behind her decision. She brought up concerns regarding Ogden Elementary and whether concerns from the community as well as those living in west Manhattan had been addressed, which she learned from Reid were communicated. The board also heard some public comment prior to the business meeting Wednesday night.
The board will look to finalize the plan at their Feb. 17 meeting.
In other business Wednesday the school board gave final approval to the bison mascot and brown and gold school colors for Oliver Brown Elementary and approved a new dish machine for Amanda Arnold.
