Is your student's school zone changing?

Some students will be zoned for different schools next year after the Rapides Parish School Board approved a zoning proposal Tuesday.

District staff will compile a list of affected students and send letters to parents and their students' current schools as early as next month, said Kim Bennett, deputy assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. She wants to notify parents as soon as possible as scheduling begins for next year.

A committee of 10 district administrators and department heads began the process by looking at high schools in the parish and working down to its feeder schools. Committee members followed a few “guiding principles” that would help create consistent feeder systems, increase parental involvement by building neighborhood schools, reduce time spent on school buses as well as costs of long bus rides and more evenly distribute enrollment to reduce overcrowding.

Bennett presented the proposal Tuesday. It passed unanimously without questions or discussion from board members or public in attendance.

Breaking down the changes

The proposal reduces enrollment at Pineville and Tioga high schools, which Bennett said are at capacity for their buildings, and increases enrollment at Bolton and Peabody Magnet high schools. The buildings of Peabody Magnet and Bolton were built to hold up to 1,500 students, Bennett said, and ASH is "maxed out" at about 1,400. Pineville is at its capacity with about 1,400 students, and Tioga is nearing its capacity of 1,200.

The immediate change in enrollment will not be significant, but will grow over time. The district is starting by sending any current eighth-graders who are zoned for a different high school than they would have been last year to the new school. But students already at those high schools will not change. In other words, it affects freshmen next year, but not sophomores, juniors or seniors.

Current ninth- to 11th-grade students will have the option of staying at their current school with transportation provided or they will be allowed to attend the new zoned school. New elementary and middle school zones take effect at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year. Students will have the option of staying at their current school if they provide their own transportation.

Expected enrollment changes for next year are 38 more students at Bolton, 27 more at Peabody Magnet, six fewer at Pineville and 23 fewer at Tioga. Projected over a three-year transition period, those figures are 146 more at Bolton, 135 more at Peabody, 60 fewer at Pineville and 92 fewer at Tioga.

"These are not massive numbers we're moving," Bennett said. "It's not enough to just change a school culture. We didn't want to go in and change the culture of a school."

A similar effect occurs with elementary schools in Alexandria. Horseshoe and Julius Patrick elementary schools will receive more students, while overcrowded J.B. Nachman and Cherokee elementary schools will see fewer. The latter two use several portable buildings to accommodate their current numbers.

Zoning changes will send 119 students from Cherokee Elementary to Horseshoe Elementary and 137 students, who live south of MacArthur Drive and currently attend J.B. Nachman Elementary, to Julius Patrick Elementary, all of which are Alexandria schools. This reduces the disparity between the four schools' enrollment, which currently range from about 180 at Horsehoe to more than 660 at Nachman.

Another change on the elementary level is where each school sends its students for middle school. Julius Patrick students currently go to Alexandria Middle Magnet School for sixth grade then "splinter" to either Tioga or Pineville junior high schools and later Tioga or Pineville high schools, Bennett said. Starting next year JPE students will go to AMMS for all three years of middle school and then Bolton for high school.

Those zoned for Peabody Montessori Elementary will go to Arthur F. Smith Middle Magnet for seventh and eighth grades now instead of Pineville or Tioga for middle and high school. Then they will continue on to Peabody Magnet High. Those in the northern section of the zone for Mabel Brasher Elementary will go to AMMS for seventh and eighth (rather than Tioga Junior High) and then to Bolton.

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Students in the Alma Redwine Elementary zone will attend middle school at Arthur F. Smith  and high school at Peabody Magnet. There are no changes for students at North Bayou Rapides Elementary, who matriculate to Tioga Junior High and Tioga High.

The projected change in enrollment in middle schools for next year is 16 more students at Arthur F. Smith Middle Magnet, 64 more at Alexandria Middle Magnet, 24 fewer at Pineville Junior High and 42 fewer at Tioga Junior High.

These changes are intended to relieve overcrowded schools and better use underutilized facilities, reduce time and money spent on buses and limit the number of transitions from school to school. The latter is why the district is transitioning in these changes over three years rather than having upperclassmen change schools again.

"Educational research tells you more transitions for students reduces instruction ... because they have to get used to (a new school) each time," Bennett told the board.

A change that received applause from the audience Tuesday is in the Forest Hill area. The proposal adds seventh grade to Forest Hill Elementary next year and eighth the following year, allowing students to stay there for middle school before heading to Rapides High School for ninth through 12th grades.

This comes after Forest Hill community members approached the school board in May, asking to keep their students at Forest Hill Elementary past sixth grade. Students currently go to middle school at Rapides High, and some parents voiced concern about having such an age range of students together.

"I'm just glad that they decided to give us what we asked for," Village of Forest Hill Alderman Jerriot Robinson said, adding that some have waited more than 30 years for this. "... All we want to do is keep our kids in our community as long as possible."

Seventh grade also will be added to Carter C. Raymond Elementary in Lecompte next year, with eighth to follow in 2017.

On the transportation side, the zoning changes could reduce the number of buses going to Tioga and Pineville high schools from nine to five, resulting in savings in money for the district and time for students.

Breaking down the process

The district used the analytics program GuideK12, which contains information about students like their addresses, grade, academic scores and ethnicity. Bennett said the district looked only at addresses. Diversity and academic performance were not guiding principles in making zoning changes, she said.

“The only factors were the guidelines of 'improving the education experience for all students and ensuring equitable and responsible use of district resources,'” Bennett said. "It was not our guiding principle to include academic success."

Currently, students zoned for Alexandria elementary schools are zoned for middle schools in Pineville and Tioga due to desegregation efforts in the 1970s. The Rapides Parish School District was declared unitary, or racially equal, and allowed out from under its desegregation order in 2006.

Pineville attorney Mike Johnson, one of the attorneys to represent the school board in its desegregation case, said that race is not to be an issue when it comes to creating school zones, hiring or anything else in the district..

"One of the things the court ordered (in 2006) was that race no longer be a consideration for anything," Johnson said. "From a legal standpoint, they're within the final order of the court."

Parents still have some options when it comes to choosing a school beyond their students' zone. There remains open enrollment for public high schools in Rapides Parish, and parents are offered "choice" schools each year if their zoned school received a failing grade from the state Department of Education.