BENTONVILLE -- The School District is considering what one administrator called "tweaks" to elementary and middle school attendance zones that would take effect next fall.
Tanya Sharp, director of student services, shared the proposal at Monday's School Board meeting. The tweaks would be made to zoning maps for the 2019-20 school year the board approved in December and February.
Overflow
The Bentonville School District has 24 students at the elementary level attending schools outside the zone in which they live. Those are commonly called “overflow” students.
Source: Staff report
The board will decide at its meeting next Monday whether to approve the changes.
The proposal calls for shrinking Elm Tree Elementary's zone by shifting a rectangular block -- defined as Arkansas 102 to Southwest Carriageway Avenue, and from Southwest Quartz Avenue to Southwest Elm Tree Road -- to Jones Elementary School's zone. The change would send 76 students from Elm Tree to Jones.
Elm Tree, under the map currently set to take effect next school year, would open at 98 percent of its capacity in the fall, according to the district's projections. The proposed change would reduce that to 85 percent, while Jones Elementary would be at 72 percent capacity.
Travis Riggs, board president, questioned how a 600-unit apartment complex set to open soon near Jones Elementary could affect that school's enrollment.
Sharp estimated the complex would bring about 78 elementary students to the zone. Jones' zone previously was reduced in size to account for anticipated residential growth, "But we feel like we reduced them too much," she said.
The district also is proposing shrinking the zone for Evening Star Elementary, the 12th elementary school set to open next fall. Evening Star's zone would be cut so 28 students in that zone's western half would remain at Central Park Elementary.
The district likely will build its 13th elementary school in its southwest corner. The goal is not to affect the students in that area by making them change schools twice once elementary No. 13 opens, Sharp said.
Overcrowding at Ardis Ann Middle School has prompted the district to tweak its middle school boundaries as well, which will affect three of the district's five middle schools and about 100 current fifth-graders.
A chunk of Ardis Ann's zone in Centerton -- from West Centerton Boulevard to Seba Road, and from Keller Road to North Main Street -- will shift to Creekside's zone. Creekside, in turn, will lose a small part of its zone to Barker Middle School.
"With Creekside in the area that it is in and its zone growing, we don't need that many students moving in there," Sharp said. "So we looked at several neighborhoods, we looked at everything we could do. And in order to balance those out, we pulled some out of Creekside where their zone backs into Barker."
Ardis Ann's enrollment will be at 82 percent of capacity instead of 104 percent next year if the change is approved. Creekside would go from 77 percent to 87 percent.
Riggs asked if there was any way to leave Creekside out of the change and simply move students from Ardis Ann to Barker, but there's no good way to do that, Sharp said.
Joe Quinn, a board member, said he hopes the community is paying attention to the district's efforts to keep attendance zones balanced.
"Despite the fact we spend millions of dollars to constantly have construction underway, we are still dealing with very complex capacity questions," Quinn said.
NW News on 11/06/2018