Springhill Families on WJCC Redistricting: No More

By Amber Lester Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Parents in the Springhill neighborhood of James City County have had enough.

In the latest redistricting planning meeting, the neighborhood was slotted to move from Matoaka Elementary to DJ Montague Elementary school – its fourth redistricting since the neighborhood was constructed in 1994.

The Williamsburg-James City County School Board is redistricting its elementary and middle schools in preparation for the opening of J. Blaine Blayton Elementary School and Lois Hornsby Middle School in the fall. Vendor Education Logistics, Inc. has produced three maps following the board’s three main criteria: proximity, capacity and socioeconomic diversity.

Now, parents Richard and Susan Tisdale are rallying neighbors to keep Springhill’s 57 children at Matoaka Elementary. The Tisdales have produced a YouTube video to document the neighborhood’s redistricting history, started a Facebook group and are passing around a petition. But if that doesn’t get their message across, the Tisdales are willing to take their case to court.

Virginia Code, under section 22.1-87 for Judicial Review, states that any parents or guardian of a student who is aggrieved with the action of the school board, can petition the circuit court to review the action within 30 days. At that time, the circuit court would review the minutes of the meeting in which the action was taken, the orders of the school board, an attested copy of the transcript (if one exists) and any other evidence found relevant. “The action of the school board shall be sustained unless the school board exceeded its authority, acted arbitrarily or capriciously, or abused its discretion,” the code states.

Richard believes that if the board moves Springhill and none of its surrounding neighborhoods to DJ Montague, it will have acted arbitrarily. The current map shows the neighborhoods of Rolling Meadows and The Mews moving from DJ Montague to Matoaka, which would have those students riding buses past their current school to get to their new school. He suggests the board leave those two neighborhoods at DJ Montague and leave Springhill at Matoaka.

The Tisdales say it isn’t about what school their daughters attend; it’s about establishing some stability in their schooling. Their oldest daughter, a sixth-grader, started school at DJ Montague. Many of her close friends lived in Ford’s Colony, and she joined a Girl Scout troop based in the neighborhood. In 2006, she was moved to Matoaka and found it hard to continue her involvement with the Ford’s Colony Girl Scout troop.

Her younger sister, a second-grader, has only attended Matoaka. If she is moved to DJ Montague, she will leave behind her best friends, many of whom live in nearby Powhatan Secondary. She asked her parents if they could move to the neighborhood.

Powhatan District Representative Joe Fuentes says the redistricting plans are not set and the board still has problems to resolve with the maps, especially in schools that are presently too far under or over capacity. Still, he says, none of Springhill’s elementary school-age children would have been affected by redistricting more than six years ago.

Susan Tisdale says it’s not just about her kids; she’s also concerned for less fortunate students who would be moved to satisfy the board’s goals to balance the free and reduced lunch population among the schools. “A teacher told me that some of the kids that get hurt the most are the disadvantaged,” she says. “This breaks relationships.”

Last month, the board met at the division’s operations building to see what would happen if specific neighborhoods were moved into different school districts. Read more here. At that meeting, it became clear the board might not be able to honor two of the public’s requests: avoid moving students who were affected by the last redistricting and avoid splitting neighborhoods.

After seeing how the free and reduced lunch and capacity numbers were affected by each neighborhood shift, the board considered moving Springhill from Matoaka Elementary to DJ Montague Elementary. The board also briefly discussed splitting some larger neighborhoods, such as Greensprings Plantation, Powhatan Secondary and Ford’s Colony, by natural road boundaries.

The most recent maps and neighborhood listings are available here. The board will host a public hearing on the redistricting options at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the board room in Building F of the county complex.