By Jim Newell
Review Editor
Lake Orion Community Schools announced the 2017-18 school year attendance boundaries for the middle schools at the school board meeting Jan. 25.
A boundary map for Oakview, Waldon and Scripps middle schools is on page 13. Boundary maps for individual middle school and elementary schools are available on the district website, www.lakeorion.k12.mi.us.
School administrators have been working on redistricting the elementary and middle school boundaries for the past couple months, since the board voted to close Pine Tree Elementary in November.
Rick Arnett, assistant superintendent of human resources, took the lead in drawing the new attendance boundaries.
“As we embarked on this adventure our goal was to evenly distribute our resident children as evenly as possible,” Arnett said. “There’s not a significant change, especially in the shape of the districts.”
The goal has been to balance out the student population between the schools without splitting neighborhoods, and to consider bus routes and the length of time students would have to spend on the bus rides to and from school, he said.
Arnett said that when drawing the new boundaries, the district was “Looking to be efficient, looking to be fiscally responsible and efficient with transportation routes.”
“It’s more evenly balanced, taking into consideration keeping neighborhoods intact and transportation efficiencies,” Arnett said.
The district is currently redistricting resident students and then will work on placing schools of choice students where there is available space. The school board has previously capped SOC students to 10 percent of any school’s population.
“We felt collectively this was the best setup moving forward,” Arnett said of redrawing the middle school boundaries. “We’re still affecting many families – it’s the nature of doing this. But it’s much less than at the elementary level,” Arnett said.
“It’s a daunting task when you’re looking at 3,000 elementary students and verifying each of those,” Arnett said. “Those a lot of data crunching that goes into this type of task.”
Heidi Mercer, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, is currently working with school principals on a transition plan to inform and welcome students and parents to help them adjust to a new school.
“Every middle school is both going to lose and gain,” Birgit McQuiston said. “I know there are going to be some students and families disappointed with this, but we’re going to get through this and come out stronger because of it…I see great things in our future.”