SCHOOL BOUNDARIES TAKE ANOTHER TURN

Cape Girardeau school administrators have developed a compromise proposal they hope will end controversy over where to place elementary school boundary lines when Barbara Blanchard Elementary School opens next fall.

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education adopted boundaries in 1997 to accommodate the closing of May Greene and Washington schools after a new elementary school was built and opened. A committee charged with revisiting those boundaries this year presented a second proposal in February, saying the 1997 boundaries wouldn't work with current enrollment numbers.

The newest proposal returns to the boundaries adopted in 1997. Adjustments were made only to the lines dividing Franklin and Barbara Blanchard schools to improve use of both buildings

The February proposal sparked debate mainly from parents whose children currently attend Alma Schrader, Clippard and Franklin schools. School board member Dr. Bob Fox also criticized the February proposal, saying he wanted a plan that remained loyal to the neighborhood school concept and affected the least number of children.

"We were at a point where we needed a compromise plan," said schools superintendent Dr. Dan Tallent. "We needed something that would pass a vote of the school board."

Racial and socioeconomic diversity were still considerations used to develop the new plan, but the most important goal was to keep enrollments manageable and affect the least number of students, Tallent said.

"I charged (assistant superintendent David Giles) with the idea of starting with the '97 plan and making revisions that would bring us within the building capacities but also would attempt to modify the racial numbers," Tallent said.

Giles said he worked some 30 hours maneuvering the lines to make the 1997 boundaries work. The plan uses building enrollments as of March 26 and does not include sixth-graders or ungraded students enrolled in special education classes.

In addition, overload students attending classes at a different school because their home school was overcrowded were included in their home school enrollment.

Giles said the new enrollment figures show a nonwhite enrollment of 27 percent throughout the district. Federal guidelines require any efforts to improve racial diversity be within 20 percent of the district's minority enrollment, with no building having a minority enrollment of 50 percent or more.

Although minority enrollments that fall within 20 percent of the district's total is the requirement, federal officials said getting enrollments within 10 percent would be ideal. All of the district's elementary schools will meet 10 percent except Alma Schrader and Jefferson schools, which will meet federal requirements with 12 and 43 percent minority enrollments, respectively.

"This will give us some breathing room and allow us to hopefully alleviate some of the overcrowding at Franklin," said Giles. "It brings us close to meeting the mean minority loadings for all the schools."

Giles said he also tested the new plan to see if it supported grandfathering of all 2,135 elementary students in the district. Grandfathering will not be an option based upon building usage and minority enrollments, he said.

Specifically, Alma Schrader's sixth grade would have to accommodate more than 80 students, Franklin would have 35 students more than its capacity, and Blanchard would be underused with some 200 fewer students than its capacity.

"The numbers show me that we can't do an all-grades grandfathering if we operate under the assumption that anyone who can grandfather will grandfather," Giles said.

The new proposal will be presented to the school board for consideration during a meeting April 19. School patrons can comment on the new proposal at the beginning of the meeting during a period reserved for public comment. Later in the meeting, board members will be asked to make a decision regarding the redistricting plan.

Giles and Tallent said no plan will please everyone, but they hope this plan will be considered the best compromise and that it will allow school officials to continue with the business of the district.

"There'll be some people who are very happy with this, and there'll be some who are not," said Giles. "In the end, we have to trust in our representative form of government."