Sylvania Schools board members approved a plan to redraw district boundaries for the 2018-19 school year after months of often contentious back-and-forth with parents and community members.
Monday’s decision means 9 percent of elementary and 12 percent of junior high students will change schools come the fall of 2018, although officials also approved a grandfathering provision that will allow any student enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade at the end of the 2017-18 school year to stay put.
The vote was unanimous, but board member Dave Speiss said he cast his vote with reluctance.
“Today we vote on a less-meaningful, and somewhat watered-down plan with an extensive grandfathering clause. We may not see the true results of redistricting for another six to eight years,” Mr. Speiss said. “While I will vote yes, it is with reluctance and knowing what could have, should have, would have.”
Officials since January have debated how to best shift enrollment in the district’s 12 schools to alleviate crowding in the west. They’ve gone through several draft plans and ultimately settled on a blend of the two most popular scenarios proposed by a 25-member task force.
The approved plan is anchored by what administrators call “direct feeder patterns,” meaning children who start kindergarten together will remain together through high school. It also leaves the grade configurations in each school as-is, so no new buildings need to be constructed and no existing buildings need renovations.
Mr. Speiss would rather convert an elementary school building into a junior high, which would create six elementary schools with grades K-4, four junior highs with grades 5-8, and two high schools for 9-12.
He said he believes district officials made decisions based on a flood of community complaints rather than on education experts.
“As we heard the concerns, discussions, and oppositions to any of the plans, the consistent theme has been, ‘Yes, we understand the need to redistrict, but not my school, my neighborhood, or my son or daughters,’” he said.
Adam Fineske co-chaired the redistricting task force and will become interim superintendent when Scott Nelson departs Aug. 1. He said he is confident the compromise between expert opinions and community feedback will work, although he acknowledged the impact may be delayed, depending on how many families take advantage of grandfathering.
The board also passed an incremental redistricting policy that calls for enrollment and school capacities to be analyzed every two or three years and new boundaries drawn as-needed.
“We will do it if we need to,” Mr. Fineske said. “There’s a lot of growth continuing out west. If that growth really hits, we’ll have to, and we wanted to make that clear to parents so they weren’t surprised.”
Sylvan Lakes neighborhood residents Virginia and Dave Thompson said they were “very disappointed” in what they called a “rushed” decision Monday. With two children in junior high and one in elementary school, they said they believe redistricting will break neighborhoods apart.
“Some of us will go into the new schools, some of us will go to private schools because we’re very unhappy, and some of us will do the grandfathering,” Mrs. Thompson said.
Contact Sarah Elms at: selms@theblade.com or 419-724-6103 or on Twitter @BySarahElms.
First Published June 13, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
