School Bd. Tweaks Maps, Makes Compromises to Goals

By Amber Lester Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Williamsburg-James City County School Board members spent nearly three hours tweaking redistricting maps at a special call meeting Tuesday.

By the end of the marathon session, the board members were confident they had made progress, but admitted much of that progress would draw the ire of many parents.

Throughout the meeting, members shared their ideas to improve the B option maps with vendor EDULOG over a conference call at the district’s Operations Center on Jolly Pond Road. Their changes will be reflected in new numbers and maps to be sent to the Operations staff later this week.

According to its contract, the board can receive one more draft of the redistricting maps. If the board needs another set of maps, it will cost more money. Board member Ruth Larson said the board exceeded its original map order in the last redistricting.

The division is redistricting to fill two new schools set to open in the fall — J. Blaine Blayton Elementary and Lois Hornsby Middle. The schools are being constructed to address overcrowding and growth projections in the northern part of the county.

In the audience, about 14 parents watched as the members tried to see how each move affected the entire district. Every shift of a neighborhood changed the school populations, free and reduced lunch percentages and bus ride lengths.

Going into this meeting the board’s stated goals, according to the meeting’s agenda, were:

• Keep the IB program at James River Elementary School and keep the magnet school exempt from any changes that would affect the free and reduced lunch numbers.

• Use “economic balance” as criteria in place of “diversity.”

• Allocate more resources to schools receiving Title I federal funding.

• Plan for the Pre-K program to affect all elementary schools.

• Keep neighborhoods together.

• Use natural boundaries if neighborhoods must be split.

• Aim for minimal movement.

• Try not to move students who were moved in the last redistricting.

• Account for growth potential.

But once faced with the capacity and free and reduced lunch numbers, and rapidly changing maps, the board had to compromise on some of its goals.

Keeping large neighborhoods together might be too difficult; it might also be impossible to avoid moving students who changed schools two years ago. The board also had to reconsider EDULOG’s unpopular concept of identifying some neighborhoods as “pockets” — small areas that would be used to balance free and reduced lunch and capacity numbers.

The board systematically worked through each elementary school in the district, moving neighborhoods in and out to see how close the maps could get to the board’s target numbers. The board wants to keep school capacities around 85 to 88 percent, but faced challenges with schools in areas with little growth, like Clara Byrd Baker and Matthew Whaley. Throughout the meeting, neighborhoods in those districts had to be tweaked to keep capacity from surpassing 90 percent.

The board’s other biggest challenge is filling the new elementary school, which was built in an area where growth is expected, but construction has slowed due to the poor economy. After shifting about 140 students from Blayton to Stonehouse and Norge, member Joe Fuentes said, “Now we have to fill up Blayton.”

After coming up with some neighborhoods to possibly populate Blayton, such as Windsor Forest, Westmoreland and Longhill Gate, member Elise Emanuel said, “We can’t open a half-empty school.” Chair James Nickols joked, “A half-full school!”

About 60 students might also move from Matoaka to Blayton. Matoaka’s district presented big challenges for the board because many of the neighborhoods are too large to move the entire student population to a different school. Member Ruth Larson said the board would have to consider dividing neighborhoods, such as Greensprings Plantation, by natural road boundaries. She said smaller neighborhoods, like Springhill, have been historically shifted over and over because of their size.

“We can’t just pick on small neighborhoods just because somebody had the misfortune to not be able to buy a house in a neighborhood with a pool,” she said.

Ultimately, the board’s suggestions brought Blayton’s capacity to 81 percent, which left room for potential growth in that area. The board had to settle in other areas as well; according to the tweaks made Tuesday, Rawls Byrd’s free and reduced lunch population might be in excess of the board’s goal at 36 percent. The goal had wanted to stay within 7.5 and 10 percentage points of the district average of 24.7 percent.

The board members had few tweaks to option B of the middle school maps. The members hoped to reduce the capacity at Berkeley and Hornsby middle schools. To achieve that, they suggested moving Fox Ridge and Longhill Station to Toano Middle.

The board plans to host a public forum at 6:30 p.m. on March 11, tentatively planned to be in Building F of the county complex.