By Jim Newell
Review Editor
Lake Orion Community Schools announced the district boundaries for the upcoming 2017-18 school year at the Board of Education meeting Jan. 11, and plans to release the new middle school attendance boundaries at the Jan. 25 board meeting.
A boundary map of the six remaining elementary schools – Blanche Sims, Paint Creek, Webber, Orion Oaks, Stadium Drive and Carpenter – is listed below. Boundary maps for individual elementary schools are available on the Lake Orion 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, with Assistant Superintendent Rick Arnett taking the lead in drawing the new attendance boundaries, shortly after announcing that Pine Tree Elementary would be closed at the end of this school year.
Superintendent Marion Ginopolis said the process is “Two years in the making,” ever since the district knew it would have to make cuts to accommodate a dwindling student enrollment due to ‘ageing out,’ or graduating more students than are entering the district.
When considering the new attendance boundaries, the district kept eight objectives in mind, Ginopolis said:
1. Distribute students currently enrolled in the building selected to be closed.
2. Minimize the impact on the current facility usage of remaining buildings. i.e. Art, Music, Special Education, Student Support Programs.
3. Balance enrollment across all elementary buildings.
4. Maximize facility capacity at a reasonable percentage.
5. Allow for potential growth of resident students in the future.
6. Create efficiencies in transportation routing. “Which was a big issue for us in terms of the routing,” Ginopolis said.
7. Minimize splitting of neighborhoods. “The previous boundaries were odd, in terms of attendance areas,” Ginopolis said.
8. Evenly distribute current SOC Students; continue to enroll SOC students using the same approach
Middle school boundaries will be available on the district’s website after the board meeting, and the district said it will be sending updates to parents via school messenger.
“We had hoped to have the middle school boundaries, (but) we’ve run into a couple of questions in terms of the number of students…we will have those as soon as possible,” Ginopolis said.
The district is still working on bus routes. As soon as they have those completed, the district will be able to release the start and stop times of the schools, Ginopolis said.
Assistant Superintendent Heidi Mercer informed the board of education that she has been working with building principals for the past couple of months regarding supporting students, parents and staff with the transition.
“Our students will approach this how our adults will approach it. I think it is very important to remember as adults that we can view this as something that is negative or as an opportunity. And I think that is the message we want to send to our students, that this really is opportunity. It is also one of those things that I think life is about change. It’s about working through change,” Mercer said
“We have been working diligently to put a transition plan together and that will be sent out via school messenger, as well,” Mercer said. The plan will contain more specific dates and information about open houses and other events.