School Board to get final look at proposed attendance zones

SPRINGDALE -- Attendance zones for more than 800 children are expected to change with the opening of Springdale's 18th elementary school.

The School Board on Tuesday will consider approving a proposal to redraw attendance zones for six elementary schools to make room for the new Linda Childers Knapp Elementary School.

The $16.9 million campus on Oriole Street, south of Robinson Avenue, is expected to open for 600 children in kindergarten through fifth grade, said Gary Compton, assistant superintendent for support services. The campus also houses a separate prekindergarten center designed for up to 300 children.

The proposed zone for Childers Knapp Elementary has an "I" shape, pulling students largely from the Harp, Monitor and Sonora elementary zones and small pockets of children from the George and Parson Hills zones.

The proposal also shifts some students out of the Turnbow Elementary zone and into zones for Harp and Sonora.

No changes are planned for Bayyari, Jones or Lee elementary schools.

Matthew Bott was disappointed to learn his son Ryan, 8, and daughter Katie, 6, likely will have to leave Sonora and go to the new school under the proposed zones.

Bott and his wife, Kathryn, the children's stepmother, attended a recent meeting at Sonora to learn about the changes and the new school. A similar meeting took place at Harp. The Botts live in Lowell and share custody of the children, whose mother lives in Springdale.

Bott said he appreciated Cindy Covington, the new Childers Knapp principal, being there to talk to parents. The proposed school zones seem to make sense, he said.

"We are working on getting psyched up for the new school," Kathryn Bott said. "Change is hard."

Work to redraw attendance zone boundaries for the district's elementary schools east of Thompson Street has been ongoing since fall. This Tuesday will be the third time for the School Board to see the proposed zones.

"We've got a new school," Compton said. "We need to fill it up appropriately."

The proposed zones reduce enrollments at the district's largest elementary schools -- Monitor, Sonora and Turnbow -- and will give them room to grow, Compton said. Enrollments at Monitor and Turnbow exceed 800 children, and enrollment at Sonora has reached about 720 children, he said.

If the zones are approved, Compton projects the enrollments in those schools will range from 570 to 640 students.

Teachers at Sonora Elementary were told which of their students lived in the new zones, so they could let parents know about the changes during parent-teacher conferences at the end of March, said Principal Regina Stewman.

Switching schools can be hard, she said.

"The good thing is parents usually love the schools they attend," Stewman said. "There's always the unknown. In Springdale, we hire great teachers and great administrators. They'll be in good hands."

Maribel Childress, principal of Monitor Elementary, said she had not discussed the rezoning with her families yet, but plans to send home notes Monday to families affected by the rezoning.

Families who prefer to stay at their schools will have the option of completing a transfer request with the school that will be new for them, but school district administrators plan to take a tough stance on allowing students to stay at their former schools, Compton said.

"Every individual circumstance would be looked at," he said. "We're creating these new zones for a reason."

Compton said he sought a simple process that moved as few children as possible. He worked to keep neighborhoods together, create zones that enable children to walk to school and for the zones to make logical sense at a glance.

Sonora's attendance zone encompasses a large geographic area that reaches to the district's eastern border, but the attendance zone now has a finger that cuts two miles through the center of Springdale around Emma Avenue. Much of that finger is proposed to shift to the Knapp zone.

The maps aren't perfect, though, Compton said.

Monitor's attendance zone, in the northeast part of the district, will continue to wrap around Bayyari Elementary, with a small stretch sitting between Bayyari and Lee elementary schools.

"That's a heavily populated area," Compton said. "Neither Bayyari or Lee could accommodate that area."

Turnbow's attendance zone, on the southeast side of the district, reaches from far east Springdale to some neighborhoods near Thompson Street, wrapping around Harp and George Elementary schools. George Elementary is at capacity, Compton said. The new Harp zone will reach further into Turnbow's attendance zone, but Turnbow's zone will continue to reach Thompson Street.Those families already drive past George and Harp to go to Turnbow, and the new plan keeps those families at Turnbow.

"Our goal was to be minimal here," Compton said.

NW News on 04/11/2016