Gutman expected to recommend redistricting plan

An article by Angela Niemi    No Comments

Walled Lake Consolidated School District Superintendent Ken Gutman is expected to give his redistricting recommendation to the Board of Education tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 2, in light of the impending closure of Maple and Twin Beach elementary schools.

With 700 students between those two schools to accommodate among the remaining elementaries in the fall, redistricting was an inevitable part of the school closing process. The school board has been presented three possible plans — which are available at www.wlcsd.org — for the redistricting process.

As part of that process, the district formed an advisory committee which was comprised of a teacher, parent, and principal from each pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school; a special education representative; a pre-school representative; parental chairpersons; and Deputy Superintendent Chris Delgado, who has acted as facilitator.

The committee has looked at various factors, such as enrollment data; transportation considerations; facility configurations; budgetary implications; feeder patterns; continuity of neighborhoods and municipalities; and the phasing-in of new attendance boundaries.

The main goal of the redistricting plans was to establish a balance at each of the schools.

“We want to keep each school at a 93 to 95 percent capacity rate so there will be no school at 100 percent,” Delgado said. “We feel this is a reasonable capacity. It allows a teacher to continue to be able to teach, students to make it through the lunch lines, and parents to make it through the parking lot easily. By keeping capacity at under 100 percent, we also have a buffer for new kids and transfers.”

The current possible redistricting possibilities — Plans A, B-C, and D — can be found at the district’s website. The presentations show which students, by zone, would be impacted and how so with each plan.

“Students from every school have to shift in some way to accommodate the Twin Beach and Maple students,” Delgado said.

And the shifts that will occur depend on how the Maple and Twin Beach students are redistricted, with some school zones being more affected than others.

Currently, the district also has 238 transfer students, those students who live in the attendance area of one elementary school but were granted permission to attend another one.

Plans A and D both reset transfer students to their original home schools but leave room, in most cases, for students to reapply for a transfer back.

Plan B-C presentation accounted for both resetting transfer students and keeping them at their current schools.

The district also plays host to 118 Schools of Choice students.

Plan A and Plan B-C both allow Schools of Choice students to remain at their current schools. Plan D has those students being reset with room remaining available at most schools.

While all plans allow the four middle schools to accommodate the proposed numbers and allow space for Schools of Choice and transfer requests, the Middle School Subcommittee endorsed Plan B-C because of its equitable distribution of students over the next several years.