PROPOSAL COMPARISONS: PARENTS HAVE OWN BOUNDARY IDEAS (DRAWING THE LINES -- SECOND IN A SERIES)

Ask and you shall receive.

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education is requesting input regarding a recent proposal to redraw elementary school boundaries, and they're getting it.

Parents have ideas galore when it comes to righting what they believe would be a big mistake in uprooting some 350 kids when school begins in August. They hope the school board will listen to their suggestions and reconsider broad changes to existing boundaries.

"I'm encouraging everybody to come to the (school board) meeting Monday and tell them how they feel," said Joy Auer, whose children would move from Clippard to Jefferson under the new proposal. "We've got to let them know how we feel about what they're trying to do."

Suggestions from parents have been as plentiful as the number of boundary changes considered in the proposal. Most parents are adamant they don't want to see lines drawn down neighborhood streets or through subdivisions. They also support boundaries that move the smallest number of students possible.

"There's the issue of safety to consider," said Dee Dee Wilson, whose children would move from Alma Schrader to Blanchard under the proposal. "Bus drivers change, bus numbers change -- how are these people supposed to know which children they're supposed to pick up?"

Wilson supports a complete move from neighborhood schools to attendance centers. If students from the same grade level are together early on, they achieve racial and socioeconomic diversity and allow students to develop lasting friendships, she said.

"I've seen what happens in the seventh grade and it can be explosive," said Wilson. "It's just a matter of staggering the grade levels of the schools."

No specific counterproposals have been offered regarding placement of the boundaries, largely because parents said they haven't been able to obtain enrollment numbers from school officials. Information from a committee redrawing the lines doesn't indicate where the students counted for the proposal lived, and accurate counterproposals can't be developed without this information.

"If we have accurate numbers we can help them come up with other ideas about how to handle this, but we've got to have accurate information," said Martha Zolokovich, whose children would move from Franklin to Jefferson under the proposal.

Zolokovich said she'd like to see residential addresses and head counts so that a computer program could be used to develop a number of different redistricting scenarios. In this way, parents could have visible choices to consider and voice their opinions on, she said.

Other parents said they didn't trust the committee's numbers. They indicated possible inaccurate minority counts based on how a student's ethnicity was derived.

"Who's determining what race a person is?" said Donna Butler, whose children would move from Alma Schrader to Blanchard. "If the teachers are looking at students and checking a box that says 'white' or 'black' or whatever, I can see some real problems with the numbers (the committee is) working with."

Many parents favor the neighborhood school concept, where students attend a building near their homes that contains several grade levels. The school district's long-range plan includes several kindergarten through fourth grade elementary buildings and creation of fifth-sixth grade centers, but that is several years from being developed.

Neighborhood schools are better because they encourage children to develop friendships based upon their residences, they said. If boundaries divide neighborhoods, children have to adjust to much more than a new building or new friends, they said.

"My son and daughter are involved in things here," said Tracey Tripp, whose children would move from Clippard to Jefferson. "My daughter is in Girl Scouts here; these are their friends. This is their neighborhood school."

Tripp said she understands the committee's desire to crunch numbers rather than consider individual students. However, as a parent, her job it to do what's best for her children. "I wish I could be objective and consider what's in the best interest of the schools, but I'm trying to do what's best for my kids," she said.

Grandfathering is another suggestion that has gained wide support, but the definition seems to change based on the speaker. Some advocates of grandfathering want to allow sixth-graders to remain at their original school; others include sixth-graders and siblings or other grades.

In the end, it seems time is what parents want most. Time to develop specific counterproposals, time to prepare their children for a move, time for their children to develop strong relationships in whatever school they attend.

For example, Maureen Duffy said she has experienced redrawing boundary lines twice in other districts. Each time, the plans were phased in over a two-year period, which allowed everyone time to get comfortable with the idea.

"It wasn't as big a deal there, and I don't understand why we can't do something like that here," Duffy said.

Auer said she wants good explanations, consistency, and of course, time. If changes must be made, she and her children will live with them.

"I know change is necessary, and maybe these boundaries are the best solution, but being the Missourian that I am I want that shown to me," she said. "Everything I've done was based on the proposed changes (adopted in 1997), and I think we deserve to be given time to do what's best for our family."