Maize board may vote on school placement plan

It has been more than a year and a half since a group of Maize parents, unhappy that their children weren’t initially assigned to their preferred schools, launched an effort to change the district’s placement process.

On Monday, Maize school board members could decide the issue.

“I’m ready to move forward,” said board member April Barnard.

“This has been a really long process, and I’m just ready to take the next step and have a solution so we can focus our energy.”

The board’s options: Draw geographic attendance boundaries, establish a feeder-pattern system, or keep the current system for student placement.

Unlike most school districts, Maize has no geographical boundaries that determine which school a child attends. Even when Maize South High opened in 2009, the district opted not to draw boundaries, as Andover and Goddard did when they opened second high schools.

Maize instead lets families choose – or at least request – which high school their children attend: Maize High, a Class 6A school near 119th Street West and 45th Street North, or Maize South, a smaller school at 37th Street North and Tyler. Similarly, parents of fifth-graders fill out preference cards to request middle schools.

The district tries to assign about two-thirds of students to Maize High and one-third to Maize South High. Nearly all Maize students – about 86 percent – live in west Wichita.

Barnard said she has favored boundaries “from the beginning” and is ready to vote Monday to move toward drawing lines.

“I think it takes out the uncertainty,” she said. “It clears up confusion for the patrons. … It helps people when they move into the district to know what they’re doing and what school their children would attend. I just think it makes the most sense overall.”

Where the boundary lines may be, however, is unclear.

Barnard and others, including superintendent Doug Powers, say the district should hire an outside consulting firm, as the Wichita district did when it redrew boundaries for several new schools in 2012. Such consultants investigate enrollment trends, birth rates, housing starts and more.

“We really want to make sure the schools are as equal as they can be” in terms of demographics, socioeconomic levels and other factors, Barnard said. “Also, we’re still growing as a district, and someone who knows what he’s doing can maybe see those patterns. … I want to do it right.”

Bruce Nicholson, a longtime Maize board member, said he still isn’t sure what changes he might support.

“I haven’t heard anything specific, and you know it’s a little different when you look at specific plans,” said Nicholson, who represents the east portion of the district.

“If we were to look, for instance, at boundaries, what would be some of the recommendations, and who is actually going to draw them?” he said. “We’ve had some of that information but nothing specific yet.”

Nicholson said the current system “could work, but it’s just going to be more problems down the line. I think we would have less problems maybe if we made some changes.”

Powers said board members on Monday could opt to move forward with one of the options or could ask for additional information. A scientific survey of Maize patrons in May showed strong support for creating a feeder system and little support for boundaries, but the survey did not ask about specific plans or boundary lines.

Potential options presented to board members by the task force earlier this year included one that suggested a feeder system that crosses the district: Three elementary schools would feed to Maize South Middle School and then to Maize High; two elementary schools would feed to Maize Middle School and Maize South High.

Another plan suggested building a third middle school – something the board also is considering as part of a potential bond issue – and having two middle schools feed into Maize High and one into Maize South.

“What we hope happens Monday or in the near future is that the board comes to a resolution,” Powers said. “The process has been difficult on all of us. … All the stress associated with kind of the unknown.

“Being able to put a period at the end of this sentence and move to the next paragraph would be good for us.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2014 at 9:50 PM with the headline "Maize board may vote on school placement plan."