Jefferson City Public Schools will host two public meetings next week to take input from community members on the district's three proposed options for school attendance boundary line changes that could affect up to three elementary schools.
JCPS formed a boundary line committee of 32 volunteers late last year to represent each of the district's elementary schools as the committee worked with a district-contracted demographer to form recommendations for the Board of Education on how to create equity in enrollment and poverty levels between Capital City High School and Jefferson City High School.
That intended equity is being engineered through the district's plan to determine who will attend which high school by who attends which of the two middle schools that feed the high schools. Lewis and Clark Middle School will send its students to JCHS, and Thomas Jefferson Middle School will send its students to CCHS.
The boundary line committee last month decided on three boundary line scenarios to present to the public for feedback at the community meetings to be held in the cafeterias of the JCPS middle schools next week from 6-7:30 p.m. - June 12 at Thomas Jefferson, 1201 Fairgrounds Road, and June 13 at Lewis and Clark, 325 Lewis and Clark Drive.
The first scenario - "Option A" - is the most comprehensive one that would affect three elementary schools.
In all three scenarios, all of Thorpe Gordon Elementary School's students would attend Lewis and Clark and then JCHS. Currently, Thorpe Gordon students attend either Lewis and Clark or Thomas Jefferson after they leave elementary school - depending on where in Thorpe Gordon's attendance area they live - but the school's attendance area would be unified under any of the three options so any Thorpe Gordon student would go through middle and high school with their peers.
Option A also would have about 40 students who currently attend Cedar Hill Elementary School instead attend South Elementary School. Cedar Hill students would then go to Lewis and Clark and JCHS, and South students would go to Thomas Jefferson and CCHS.
The approximately 40 Cedar Hill students live in an area near the site of CCHS - an area roughly bounded by Edgewood Drive and Frog Hollow Road to the north and west; Rock Ridge Road, Glenstone Drive and Plymouth Rock Drive to the south; and Rolling Hills Drive and Creek Trail Drive to the east. CCHS will be on the north side of Mission Drive off Missouri 179.
Option B would have the 40 or so Cedar Hill students continue attending elementary school there but then go to Thomas Jefferson and CCHS.
Option C would keep the district's boundary lines as they are, with the exception of the Thorpe Gordon change.
The district would like to announce final, board-approved changes in August to give the community a year of notice of the changes that would take effect in 2019.
District officials have said boundary lines would be a board agenda item as a first and second reading for two months prior to a final recommendation, to give community members opportunities to address the board on the issue. The board will make any final decision.
The boundary line committee will take its recommendations to the board after it gets public input next week.