Columbia Public Schools committees modify attendance boundaries, plan new schools

Columbia Public Schools are adapting to the city’s changing demographics.
This summer, the district began the process of re-drawing school attendance boundaries and picking locations for a third comprehensive high school and a 20th public elementary school.

In April, 76 percent of voters approved a $60 million bond issue for Columbia Public Schools to build a new elementary school and a new high school and to institute capital and technological improvements to existing area schools. This bond issue proposal was prompted by the results of a 2005 facilities study, commissioned by the Board of Education, that found significant overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure in several area schools.

The new elementary school, which will ease the overcrowding, is expected to be located in the fast-growing northeast quadrant of Columbia. In July, the Board of Education entered into an agreement to purchase land near Waco and Brown Station Road for the school, and if the project proceeds as planned, the new school will open in fall 2009.

The new high school likely will be built in southeast Columbia, on a farm at Range Line Street and New Haven roads, five miles east of U.S. 63. The Board of Education approved the site in June, although the decision drew criticism from parents and others hoping the school would be located in the northern part of town, since Rock Bridge High School is located in the south and Hickman in the center of the city.

Even though the locations are not yet a surety, the 28 members of the elementary and high school enrollment committees have scheduled a long series of meetings to propose new school attendance boundaries.

Donald Ludwig, a member of the Board of Education, is the chairman of both committees. Ludwig helped redraw the high school boundaries in Columbia in 1998 and chaired the enrollment planning committee for Paxton Keeley Elementary School. He has a wealth of experience with school-related transitions and adheres to a particular process each time he tackles this kind of job. Ludwig and the other committee members will make their recommendations to the school administration and the school board—including suggestions for an appropriate transition plan to help families deal with changes.

The elementary committee will meet every other week through May 2008, when it presents its final recommendations to the Board of Education. Ludwig recognizes the inherent difficulty in the process. “It will never be a perfect solution,” he says. “We’ll try to be compassionate, fair and neutral and come up with the best solution possible.”

Ludwig says the new boundaries will be set and the transition plans in place by May 2008. “That will give families more than a year to make adjustments to the changes that will be imposed upon them. In certain circumstances, families will be allowed to transfer back to their original schools if they are unhappy, but they may be on their own in terms of transportation,” Ludwig says. “We will try to make it as painless as possible.”

Ludwig says the Elementary Enrollment Planning Committee will spend its early meetings coming to a consensus on a set of criteria by which all recommendations will be made. In the past, criteria have included students’ race, ethnicity, socio-economic status (SES), special-education needs, etc. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision found that using race as a deciding factor in school enrollment is unconstitutional; Ludwig says he will take direction from the school board and legal advisers on how to incorporate that new information into the process. As far as which criteria are chosen, “Everyone has to agree,” Ludwig says. “It simply won’t work if everyone is not on board from the start.”

Perhaps the most critical step in Ludwig’s planning process is the direct involvement of community members. In fall 2007, the enrollment committee will hold forums for parents and other community members to present questions, concerns and recommendations. The committee will create a “master list” of issues and concerns to which members will refer throughout the process.

“I have watched Don Ludwig run his process before, and he always offers tremendous opportunity for families to get involved and make their feelings and opinions known,” says Lynn Barnett, assistant superintendent of student support services. “The public will really have to have their heads in the sand not to know what is going on!” she jokes.

After getting the public on board, the committee will begin the work of gathering data, neighborhood by neighborhood. For all areas affected, the committee will examine: natural boundaries, highway and road plans, transportation issues, demographic composition, growth (planned and potential), expected enrollment numbers and other factors, with input from city and county planners, developers and residents.

The committee will then develop several test scenarios and, for each, draw boundaries that come close to meeting the established criteria. When the committee is close to completing its due diligence, expected in spring 2008, members will return to the same forum locations to get feedback and calibrate their recommendations to the master list from the initial forums. “Our committee will also develop a transition plan, and this will be included in the overall recommendation back to our families and our administration,” Ludwig says. The board will then vote on whether to approve the recommendations.

The planning process for the new high school is expected to be similar but will operate on a larger scale. The committee has more than twice as many members and will begin work in fall 2007. With the first phase of the high school slated to open in 2010, the high school committee will have more time to complete the process, which Barnett calls “significantly more sophisticated and complicated.”