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WJCC Posts Finalized School Attendance MapsBy Amber Lester Thursday, April 22, 2010 Parents who are wondering where their children will attend school next fall should look no further than the Williamsburg-James City County schools’ website.The current neighborhood listings, first posted on April 2, show where students will attend the elementary and middle schools. The WJCC school board unanimously approved its middle school plan and approved its elementary redistricting plan 5-2, with members Denise Koch and Jim Kelly dissenting. Read more about the meeting here. The elementary redistricting plan approved does not meet all of the board’s criteria, adopted in October. At that time, the board chose three criteria – capacity, proximity and diversity – and agreed to not to prioritize them. The board defined capacity as filling each school to 85-88 percent of its capacity; proximity was defined as no travel beyond 30 minutes; and diversity was defined as maintaining a free and reduced lunch ratio between 7.5 and 10 percentage points of the district average, which is 24.7. The final plan will leave the newest elementary school, J. Blaine Blayton Elementary, at 76 percent capacity. The school shares a plot of land with Lois Hornsby Middle School along Jolly Pond Road in the northern part of the county. The county land was chosen because of the area’s potential for growth, which made it difficult for the board to fill the school. Most of Blayton’s elementary population was pulled from neighborhoods currently attending Norge, Stonehouse and DJ Montague. Matoaka Elementary will be the most filled to capacity, at 92.5 percent, and Clara Byrd Baker and Rawls Byrd come in around 90 percent. Rawls Byrd Elementary, at 36.78 percent, and James River Elementary, at 54.7 percent, will have the highest free and reduced lunch populations. Early in the process, the board decided to leave James River Elementary the way it is to preserve its Title I funding, which is dependent on its free and reduced lunch population. Matthew Whaley Elementary’s free and reduced lunch percentage is the next highest, at 34.63 percent. Matoaka Elementary will have the lowest percentage, at 17.92 percent. Now that the redistricting plan has been approved, the division’s transportation staff will map the bus routes and the staffing for each school, including teachers, will be determined. The division doesn’t plan to hire new staff for the new schools. To see the full neighborhood listings, click here. |
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Comments
I can't believe after all the shifting & moving around Matoaka will still have the lowest "free & reduced lunches" once again.....Money talks.......
Shame on the school board.......... .
If you are concerned about your child's educational experience then straighten out your priorities and get involved in the school.
A good start would be to fix the problems at DJ Montague! They've known now for some time that there have been issues there and have not done much to fix them. Put an administrative staff in the school that will revitalize the school and testing scores. Keep the good teachers and administrators on, and get rid of the dead weight. Make it a school where children enjoy learning, and as a result perform well on testing criteria.
Look at the other schools and do the same thing. Just because a teacher or an administrator has been in the school system for years on end doesn't mean that he/she is a good match or that he/she is effective anymore. It's time to start making the administrators and teachers accountable.
Oh!, that might be hard to do when the Board itself isn't held accountable for the mistakes made during the redistricting process!
Wow! Think about it...WJCC has no Superintendent, no Assistant Superintendent and no real leadership on the school board right now. How is WJCC going to get anything accomplished this year?
If any of the Board members are reading this, one thing you all could actually do to gain some credibility is to demand some serious changes in the schools. A serious, OBJECTIVE look at the schools' administrators and teachers, the schools' test scores and the schools' resources and equipment is in order. Do the right thing this time, and make some changes to fix the issues at some of the schools!
But the school board took care of its 'pet' neighborhoods (Springhill, PS1, Windsor Forest, First Colony) so it's satisfied. The public should not be!