School committee weighs redistricting guidelines

Jefferson City Public Schools (JCPS)
Jefferson City Public Schools (JCPS)

The Jefferson City Board of Education's Policy Committee has begun talking about ways to address redrawing elementary school attendance boundaries.

No decisions or recommendations were made during Thursday's 80-minute meeting - and the seven-member school board must make the final decision on any changes to district policies or procedures.

The current elementary attendance area boundary lines have been in place for years, with some minor modifications made in 2009 when Pioneer Trail opened and replaced Southwest as an elementary school.

Those 2009 changes also involved adjustments to the boundaries for West and Belair schools.

But some have argued district administrators and the school board should have an ongoing plan for regularly reviewing the district's elementary school boundaries, to deal with changing demographics.

For instance, Chief Financial Officer Jason Hoffman reminded his fellow Policy Committee members: "Julie Martin said they had 280 students at East when she started as principal there (about 10 years ago). They have over 400 now."

The Policy Committee includes Board President John Ruth and members Pam Murray and Rich AuBuchon, Superintendent Larry Linthacum, Hoffman and Penney Rector, assistant to the superintendent for Human Resources, who also is an attorney.

Rector distributed policies currently followed by several other Missouri school districts, including Rockwood in West St. Louis County, Wentzville, Raymore-Peculiar south of Kansas City, Platte County R-3 north of Kansas City - and the Blue Valley Schools in Overland Park, Kansas.

"It seems that, if they were building a school, that's when they really looked at" changing attendance boundaries, Rector said. "Not that we (must) have a policy, but we were asked to put this on the agenda for some conversation. It would be helpful to identify the considerations that we're going to look at."

Murray wondered if the board's Facilities Committee would be the place to start when there are boundary discussions to provide the first look at those questions.

Ruth noted Hoffman already provides the administration and board with each school's attendance numbers after the official census is taken each fall.

"When there's a need, I feel comfortable with establishing a committee to take that up at the time," he said. "My concern has always been when there's just hearsay in the community, when folks say, 'I don't understand that line' or 'I don't like it.'

"Those kinds of conversations - without more information or a process for exploring it - really concern me."

Murray said the issue could be coming sooner than later, with the "ton of new construction in the last 10 years" in Holts Summit and the majority of that in the North School side of the town rather than in the Callaway Hills Elementary attendance area to the east.

The Policy Committee members also discussed how many standing committees the board should have to review ideas and issues before they're presented to the full board.

And they looked at proposed changes to the existing bullying and hazing policy, because of recent changes made in state law.

District administrators also have asked for input from the two teachers' organizations and a group of students at Jefferson City High School about those proposed modifications.