SPUSD mulls keeping students in neighborhood schools

February 17, 2016
Santa Paula News

A Santa Paula Unified School District committee is studying adjusting elementary school boundary lines as it prepares to phase in a plan to have students attend their neighborhood schools by 2019.

At Thursday’s school board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Christine Schieferle said the school district will start the phase-in with kindergarten and first-graders in the fall of 2016, affecting primarily McKevett School by reducing its boundary.

“Our philosophy is we believe in neighborhood schools, in students being able to walk to school,” Schieferle said. Currently, many students attend SPUSD schools outside the neighborhood school boundary they reside in, through what is called an intradistrict transfer.

Because McKevett and Grace Thille schools are at capacity, principals are asked not to accept any more intradistrict transfers for those schools for fall 2016, Schieferle said.

The boundary alignment committee has been reviewing the number of classrooms in each school, goals for each school and how to fit new literacy centers in each.

Trustee Diana Ponce-Gomez said the proposed boundary changes still need adjusting and the proposal should not be introduced to staff, the school board or parents if it is not ready.

“We have to give ourselves time to consider all the impacts,” Schieferle said.

One of the factors affecting boundary changes is whether the new school proposed for the East Area 1 development project on the east side of Santa Paula is K-5 or K-8, since that is still being decided, said Trustee Michelle Kolbeck.

Frida Friend, executive director of Special Education and Student Support Services, will be writing district protocols for circumstances in which intradistrict transfers will be considered, Schieferle said.

More public boundary change forums are planned, she said.





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