Maize school district dealing with placement conflict again

Maize school officials say too many students have requested to attend Maize South High School next year, echoing a situation three years ago that prompted a districtwide debate over school placement and boundaries.

Superintendent Chad Higgins said he plans to propose changing the district’s placement policy, which he says has bred an atmosphere of informal recruiting, conflict and hard feelings.

“Something has to change,” Higgins said Friday. “With a team of interested parties, I have every intention of changing the policy so that 1) we don’t ever have to talk about it again, and 2) we can move on and focus on what I think are far more important things.”

Unlike most school districts, Maize has no geographical attendance boundaries that determine where a child goes to school.

When Maize South opened six years ago at 37th Street North and Tyler, district leaders opted to let families choose – or at least request – which high school their children attend. The district tries to assign about two-thirds of freshmen to Maize High, at 119th Street West and 45th Street North, and one-third to Maize South.

But several times, more than one-third of the freshman class has requested Maize South. Based on placement requests submitted this month, 58 students who said they preferred to attend Maize South would need to be assigned by random lottery to attend Maize High.

Before making those assignments, though, officials sent a letter to families Thursday asking for volunteers to change their preference to Maize High.

“Our goal is to maintain the current enrollment levels and student-teacher ratios at each school while avoiding the need to shift teachers,” Higgins said in the letter.

“Members of our Maize Board of Education are aware and supportive of this plan, and we are in the process of working together to explore other options for a long-term student placement policy.”

Students open to changing their preference from Maize South to Maize High have been instructed to e-mail the district by noon Jan. 4.

What happens if not enough students opt to switch schools?

“We don’t know yet,” Higgins said Friday. “We’ll meet and evaluate that and formulate a recommendation to the board.”

Although the Maize school board voted 4-3 in March to keep the preference-card system, Higgins said student placement still was “one of the biggest deals I heard about right after I got the job” in July.

“It was, ‘How are you going to, or when are you going to, or are you going to fix it?’ ” he said. “My answer was always, ‘I’ve got to learn about it first.’ ”

Higgins said he has come to believe that the preference-card system was “a really good idea that went bad.”

Without clearly drawn attendance boundaries, he said, “There’s a conflict that exists internally, that doesn’t anywhere else, because of the push and pull of where kids are going to go.”

Because families can choose which school their child attends, “There’s unintentional recruiting,” Higgins said.

“Teams go watch other teams, or coaches go watch other coaches, or neighbors simply talk about how great their school is. … And even if they’re not trying to convince them to go to a certain school, it’s perceived that way.”

This fall the superintendent launched a social media campaign – complete with its own Twitter hashtag, #OneMa1ze – focused on unity within the district. He said that was designed in part to combat internal conflict between the middle and high schools.

“I am certain that our staff thinks the other schools are great. I think they believe that about each other, but it doesn’t prevent animosity and real anxiety,” he said.

One of the district’s biggest challenges, Higgins said, “has less to do with people and more to do with proximity.” Because most Maize school district residents live closer to Maize South, the smaller of the two high schools, many want to – or assume they should – attend the school closest to home, he said.

Another challenge: There’s an informal connection between Maize South Middle School, the district’s largest middle school, and Maize South High. The schools share a name and a mascot.

But Maize South High was designed for only 1,000 students and isn’t able to accept every Maize South Middle eighth-grader.

When families request a school and don’t end up getting that assignment, that leads to hard feelings, Higgins said. Three years ago about two dozen families appealed their placements. Their initial requests were granted, but at the expense of the two-thirds/one-third guideline the district wants to maintain at the high schools.

“If you tell people they get to do what they want to do and then try to tell some that they can’t, that’s a challenge that you can’t win,” he said.

Higgins said he wants a long-term placement solution in place or at least approved by this time next year, but he doesn’t know whether it should be traditional boundaries or some other system.

“Whatever we come up with, I think we have to have enough confidence in it that we can say it’s going to go,” he said. “We’re not going to try it, we’re going to do it, and then address any issues along the way.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 12:45 PM with the headline "Maize school district dealing with placement conflict again."