JACKSON DAY-CARE RIDES IN FOR CHANGE

JACKSON -- New transportation policies for Jackson public schools next fall will mean parents of students whose elementary schools and day-care centers are on opposite sides of school redistricting lines will have to find alternate transportation or new day-care services.

The Jackson Board of Education in January approved new attendance-center boundaries to coincide with the opening of South Elementary School in the fall. Boundaries for North Elementary School at Fruitland and Gordonville and Millersville attendance areas will remain unchanged. However, some students who formerly would have lived in the Primary Annex, West Lane and Orchard attendance-center areas of Jackson will attend South Elementary.

South Elementary will contain kindergarten through fifth grade and will be attended mostly by students who live in Jackson. A small number of students living near Cape Girardeau's city limits in Lamplighter Trailer Court also will be assigned to South Elementary.

The South Elementary boundaries encompass all roads east of Shawnee Street and south of East Main Street to Interstate 55 and along Highway 25 to County Road 316 past Oak Ledge Trailer Court south of Jackson. Included in the area is Grandview Acres subdivision.

The school district designates Orchard, West Lane and South elementary schools town schools because they are attended mostly by children who live in Jackson. Next fall, Primary Annex, which is in Jackson, will house solely kindergartners from all attendance areas except Millersville and South Elementary.

The school district provides bus transportation before and after school from and to most day-care centers in Jackson, said school superintendent, Dr. Howard Jones. The service is not provided to students whose child-care provider or school is in an outlying area, he said.

Beginning next school year, students who attend child-care centers in the same neighborhood as their elementary schools will still be eligible for bus transportation between school and the day-care center, said Jones. But some students whose day-care and elementary school are in different attendance areas won't be provided bus transportation, he said.

Jones said administrators had anticipated some problems with the new policy. He said few area school districts provide transportation for day-care centers, and this was the most equitable policy for everyone involved.

"If we are going by that day-care center on our regular route, and the child is going to a school in that region, then we would transport them," he said. "If we can pick up 30 kids at a day care rather than stopping at 30 houses, that benefits both of us. But we can't run a taxi service for their businesses."

Jones said the district held a meeting with child-care providers to inform them of the policy changes and is studying the impact on the day-care centers. Enrollment may drop initially for some centers as parents transfer to other day-care services within their neighborhood, but those drops likely will level off, he said.

"It may be an even swap once everything's done," he said.

The policy change will mean child-care centers like Good News Christian Center face the prospect of raising fees to cover new transportation costs or losing students.

Johnny Seabaugh of the center, which is in the South Elementary attendance area, said the center has an enrollment of about 200 children, and 50 use the bus transportation. Most live in the city limits but outside the South Elementary attendance area, he said.

The center will not provide transportation for any of its children, said Seabaugh.

Said Seabaugh: "It will affect us financially. It will cause more personnel to be exposed to liability, our liability insurance will go up, and all the day-care center can do is pass all those expenses on to the parents. We'll probably lose a lot of kids."

Marilyn Brown, director of Joyland Child Care Center, and Nancy Robertson, director of A Small World Preschool, each said they anticipate about eight of their attendees will be affected by the new policy.

Brown, whose service is near West Lane, said no parents have contacted her with concerns about living in a different attendance area. She said she intends to provide transportation for students who attend South Elementary and other town schools.

Robertson, whose center is in the Orchard Elementary area, already provides transportation for students who attend North Elementary School and Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Jackson. She said, however, unless the school day ends at different times at each school, she won't be able to accommodate students who will attend South Elementary.

"It's impossible for any day care to hit all of them if all schools get out at the same time, so at this time it doesn't seem feasible that I could get from North to South elementary schools," she said. "Some of my parents are talking about car pooling next year, and we may see more of that.

"The school district is having to make the choices because the town is growing so fast," she said.