SCHOOL BOUNDARY CHANGES STUDIED

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will consider altering boundaries between two schools just one year after overhauling the district's elementary school boundaries.

The school board will study a proposal received Monday night for a month and consider the proposed changes during a meeting in May.

"One thing's for sure -- we do have an inequity," said Superintendent Dr. Dan Steska. "To not address it at all will not help that situation."

Assistant Superintendent Cathy Evans, who handles elementary school issues for the district, said she has studied the projected enrollments for the five elementary schools since the fall. Projections for three of the buildings were on target, but Blanchard and Franklin schools have significant departures from projections, she said.

Evans, Steska and Assistant Superintendent Mark Bowles are new to the district and did not participate in the boundary adjustments approved last year. The changes were the first significant elementary school boundary changes in more than 30 years.

"I'm not sure what happened to throw those projections off between those two buildings," Evans said. "All I have to go on is the information that I received when I got here."

Blanchard was expected to have an enrollment of 442 students this year, but when a head count was taken in January the building had about 519 students enrolled. Blanchard's building capacity is 525.

At Franklin, the projected enrollment was 295, but about 249 students were enrolled in January. The school has a capacity of about 350 students.

Evans presented a proposal to school board members that would transfer a portion of students enrolled at Blanchard to Franklin in the coming school year. The change is needed because Blanchard is nearing the building's enrollment capacity and Franklin is underutilized.

Evans' proposal would move about 68 Blanchard students who live in a 16-block area in southeast Cape Girardeau. The area is bounded to the east by South Sprigg Street, to the west by Hanover Street, to the north by William Street and to the south by Shawnee Parkway.

"The principals suggested which areas to look at," Evans said. "We decided to look at a block of students rather than at grade levels because that allows neighborhoods to stay together."

The majority of the students had attended May Greene Elementary School prior to that building's closing this year. The exception is a three-block area along Good Hope between Sprigg and Hanover streets that was formerly a part of Franklin's attendance area.

About 20 parents attended the school board meeting to get information regarding the proposed boundary changes. Martha Zlokovich, who was part of a committee asked to examine the proposal last week, said she appreciates the district's problem but did not feel comfortable endorsing a plan without additional time to examine other options.

"We felt pressured to make a decision in one hour, and I couldn't say I could endorse that after only one hour," she said.

Zlokovich said she does not want to see Franklin schools return to the overcrowded conditions of recent years and hopes the district will make long-range assessments to keep enrollment within building capacities.

Steska said the board needs to make decisions for the coming school year rather than wait until the opening of the new high school planned for the 2002-2003 school year.

Developers in a new subdivision near Blanchard expect between 75 and 100 students to move into the subdivision over the next two years. That growth, along with the attendance area's high mobility rate for students, could send Blanchard's enrollment far over its capacity.

Franklin's enrollment is expected to remain steady over the next two years.

"We're trying to develop a moderate, well-planned approach," said Steska. "Two years would prolong the current overcrowding at Blanchard and the underuse at Franklin. With the growth in Blanchard, two more years could make that a difficult situation, but we want to make sure the same thing doesn't happen at Franklin."