Redistricting Committee

Public can observe process

I'm grateful the Redistricting meetings are open for public observation. I appreciate the sign-in sheet and opportunity for the public to submit questions or insights using index cards or conversations with Committee members during the break. The timely e-updates after each meeting are helpful, too. Thank you!

The table groups are working well, and the efficiency of the meeting

Criteria

During the first meeting, I found the explanation of the value and weighting of the 5 redistricting criteria very informative. The explanation has helped me articulate why they were chosen and weighted when talking to people who are interested in the process, but not attending meetings. I’m proud to be a part of a community that values the five criteria and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of our school board for carefully designing the criteria and providing clear measures to evaluate successful application.

Committee

The committee seems to represent many parts of our community and is very committed to the process. Looking around the room everyone seems highly engaged. Attendance has been excellent—I know last night was lower because of high school conferences.

Table Groups

Breaking into 4 person groups is keeping everyone engaged and having an opportunity to help shape the process. And mixing those table groups up each time helps all the committee members to hear and better understand more community viewpoints.

Scenario Evaluation Process

The way the high school scenarios were evaluated didn’t seem to be a valid process. I’m not sure it mattered for high school because the scenarios were either quite similar or pretty unworkable---not much in the middle. I don’t think the committee added any value when evaluating the scenarios. We were given a scoring guide that only allowed for a tiny bit of scoring variation between and among committee members. Then district officials picked the first and fourth highest scored scenarios to present to the community. It was explained that the scenarios in second and third place were too similar to the highest scored scenario and would not give the community a contrasting option. Also, “Maintaining Subdivisions” was used in the final evaluation formula and weighted times 2 (in alignment with the Board’s criteria) but the committee still doesn’t have any data on intact subdivisions.

Lack of Value

I feel our time and strengths could better be utilized by having more options for the appropriate boundaries of all the schools instead of drawing on maps and counting potential students. Input could have already been provided by the district using certain computer software or programs. Within the different options given topics like subdivisions, socioeconomics, and student count would’ve already been provided. I feel our talents could’ve better been utilized fine tuning the different scenarios to best represent the district.

Anyone concerned we don’t have enough time?

I reviewed our timeline and I think we need more meetings. Typing comments out next week on the ten new maps is a good way to hear committee members’ concerns, but doesn’t allow us to actually work through anything together. This is especially true if trying to address those concerns would require us going back to the map with all the student numbers and actually altering our maps. Working together was what I envisioned for this process. I am already getting a lot of public feedback and suggestions from the community on our published drafts. Add in all the public and online comments we are going to get in November and I don’t think we will have ample time to address our own and the community’s concerns, make alterations to our draft maps, score any changes and have a solid product in time. Drawing middle school lines was challenging and I can only imagine what elementary will bring. This is important and will have lasting ramifications on our community. Let’s get it right.

Subdivision Counts

I have asked for data on intact subdivision counts at the last two meetings and we haven’t been able to get this information. It has been explained that the information is available from the Platte County Assessor’s Office. Subdivisions are shown on maps with blue lines (sometimes black—if also roads). The lines are difficult to decipher, keep track of, and tabulate. It seems the demographer that has been hired must have software that could easily tabulate the information. The criteria provided by the board states that “Maintain Subdivisions” will be measured by “intact subdivision counts.” I’m not sure how to work toward this criteria without any data.

Direct Feeders

It would be great to have more information about "direct feeders". Expectation? Benefit? Timeline?

Balanced Socioeconomics

Only two scenarios have anything near balanced socioeconomics (AO4a and AO5). Our criteria goal states “a balanced socio-economic condition for all school attendance areas at each level (elementary, middle and high) will exist that is representative of the entire community”. At the high school level, scenarios varied by 0.2% to 5.3%. I can’t think of a good justification for settling for the socioeconomic imbalance on the other nine scenarios. If we settle for imbalanced middle school scenarios, the elementary feeder schools will be impossible to balance based on socioeconomics. We need some expertise in map making. I think we need a few additional scenarios that are designed by a demographer with the five criteria in mind.

I like the idea of having a belt along 45 and a belt along 9 to serve the two southern middle schools.

I had some concerns about transportation and distance to school in some of the B scenarios, but placing students along those two main roads as outlined in A5 and maybe some of A4a or 4b seems to make a lot of sense. Travelling from the west part of the county along 9 to Walden seems the best way to have anyone travel in.

Generally, the scenarios that "split" a school's boundaries may be less popular with our constituents.

Not in favor of splitting Lakeview boundaries

Options 4a, 4b and 5 have Lakeview boundaries split between the east and west. This doesn't seem efficient for transportation purposes and I think when we start looking at elementary school boundaries this could be even more problematic considering the location of Hopewell Elementary. I know that socioeconomic considerations are a criteria and this does a better job of balancing that so that is something to think about.

Intact Subdivision Counts

Thank you to the district for acknowledging the complexity of considering subdivisions in this process and working with the Platte County Assessor’s office to get this information. Success will be evaluated based on “intact subdivision counts” and we are expected to adhere to the criteria. A subdivision is different than a neighborhood, although the terms are often used interchangeably. It appears (based on information on the Platte County Assessor’s website) that multiple subdivisions are sometimes tacked together and given similar names. These clumps of subdivisions are often thought of as a neighborhood. Although our criteria doesn’t consider neighborhoods, I’m certain no one wants to separate neighborhoods. However, keeping clumps of subdivisions together can’t be a priority in this process—when doing so negatively impacts outcomes on our measured criteria. I was perplexed by the rumor below when it was voiced at the Redistricting Committee Meeting. However, now I understand the thought behind the comment. I think additional maps should be drawn with the intention of more closely adhering to each of our criteria. FAQs on District Website https://www.parkhill.k12.mo.us/cms/One.aspx?portalId=62500&pageId=46914491 Q: Do larger or richer neighborhoods have more say in the outcome than smaller or less affluent neighborhoods? A: Everyone has a say in the redistricting process. There are people on the committee from all over the district and from all backgrounds, and the committee will consider feedback from everyone who participates in the public meetings or shares their thoughts in our online engagement tool.

If we combine the best "north" map with the best "south" map we can actually have a much better product.

We need to consider treating each map as two maps. Each table technically drew two middle-school maps (one for north and one for south) and those maps should be viewed independently. One team may have done an outstanding job balancing the schools in the south, but wasn’t the best on the northern portion of the map. It is crazy to score the whole map when when only half of the map was great. We can use socio-economic balance as an example. 4B does the best job of balancing the socio-economic balance between Lakeview and Walden (4% difference). The problem is based on how the north was drawn on 4B, the disparity between Congress in the north and Walden in the south ends giving 4B the worst overall disparity (23.7% difference). If you took the northern portion of any of the other B maps, and combined it with the southern portion of 4B, the disparity between the highest and lowest middle schools is only 13.8, which is better than any other individual map. Let’s find the best north B map, and the best south B map and create a supermap.

Feedback on Scenario B2

While this scenario does a nice job of providing an enrollment balance between all four middle schools, the socio-economic balance for Walden is higher than others. (In fact, all scenario B options have Walden with a higher % of F/R lunch).

So many of the proposals are nearly identical. The differences can be sorted easily in next pahse.

Socio-Economic Balance

The socio-economic percentages for Walden are between 37-42% in every B scenario, which I believe is too high.

B1, B2, B3 have better Socio-Economic balance but still not great

A6 Preference

Similar to Kelly, I feel that A6 is the best option of these. For the south half it has a virtually equal socio-economic balance between Lakeview/Walden. It also keeps a contiguous Lakeview – eliminating the students from the north-east area having to get bused over to Lakeview, where they would have little natural connection. I feel the committee should try and avoid having small ‘pockets’ of students that are getting bused to a different school, just to make the numbers work. For the North half, I feel pretty good with all the numbers – plus I-29/Hwy 9 is such a clean break. I like having the nearby neighborhood to plaza still attend there so more students can potentially walk to school.

Map w/ current Elementary school lines

Can the district create a google map showing the current elementary school boundary lines? Similar to the maps showing the various middle school options. This would be very help when drawing elementary school boundary lines to see in detail the existing boundary lines.

Let us know Friday which Middle School maps scored highest

This applies to A and B maps, I am just posting it once. Early Friday, the District Staff will know which maps scored the highest, and which maps we will be working with on Monday. Please let us know Friday. No one will be able to actually start any maps by themselves, because we do not have the data or the subdivision blocks, but I personally would like to get my head around which maps we will be dealing with on Monday. Drawing elementary schools is going to be very challenging, especially considering some of the current map designs, and tripling the number of school boundaries. I think it would be helpful to look at the “winning” maps over the weekend and compare them to existing elementary school lines. Then on Monday, we will show up knowing which maps we are working with, and already have an understanding of how those middle school lines stack up with current elementary boundary lines. I think we can all fully expect, and understand, a willingness of our community to try to keep kids at their current elementary schools when feasible. Coming in on Monday with a slightly better grasp of the task ahead will save some time. Again, no one will be showing up with preconceived maps, because we don’t have the data or subdivision lines. All maps will be drawn as a table, in a collaborative process, as we have done all along. The extra time to take a look, in advance, will just be a time saver. If we are going to try to draw two maps on Monday night, we will need all the time we can get.

New Scenario A Maps Ready for Committee Review

The redistricting committee did great work last Wednesday building combining features of the highest scoring A maps. Middle School Scenario A05 is the highest scoring map from those produced at the meeting on September 26. The remaining four maps in this stack (A06, A07, A08 and A09) are maps produced by the committee, or "super maps" suggested by committee members during the meeting. Please note, you can drill down dynamically on the each scenario (map) using the link provided in the header of this forum. Data for each map is provided as a PDF within the link in the header for this forum. Please add your observations for this set of scenarios within this forum and respond positively to comments that you like. The committee will begin scoring these items on Wednesday, October 17 at noon.

Do we need to re-score 1st round scenarios based on updated criteria?

While I agree A scenarios didn't need updating as much as B scenarios did, just curious what old Scenario A's would score with the updated/tighter scoring.

B7-B9 Walkability

I like how B7 & B9 keep those students within walking distance of Lakeview going there. Even though all the options have an average travel distance less than 2.0 miles, I’ll probably downgrade the others by the half point to account for that difference.

B07 looks to be another strong map to pair against B02

B02 was the front runner based on the scoring last week in the B scenarios. I think B07 is stronger based on the socio-economic numbers. That is assuming that the scoring criteria has not changed. The Congress/ Plaza socio-economic numbers have also stayed the same in the best maps. That was a hard number to change and I don't see one that has changed it for the better.

New Scenario B Maps Ready for Committee Review

The redistricting committee did great work last Wednesday perfecting our Scenario B maps. Middle School Scenario B02 is the highest scoring B map from those produced at the meeting on September 26. The remaining six maps in this stack (B06, B07, B08, B09, B10 and B11) are maps produced by the committee during the meeting last week. Please note, you can drill down dynamically on the each scenario (map) using the link within the header of this forum. Data for each map is provided as a PDF within the link in the header for this forum. Please add your observations for this set of scenarios within this forum and respond positively to comments that you agree with. The committee will begin scoring these items on Wednesday, October 17 at noon.

Potential Clean Feeder Problems

B7, B9, B10 pose potential feeder problems for Elementary Schools in the West. All three scenario don't have an elementary in the logistical area for these kids to attend without large travel. Highway 45 seems to be a dividing line, of which Union Chapel and Graden both exist on the north side of that line. we know 11/4 isn't exact math, so perhaps the west is ripe for not having clean feeder paths?

Prefer B7 because of the East side boundary

Like this option not only for the better socioeconomic mix (nearly identical differences on the north and south sides) but also because it keeps the area east of I-29 all in the same school. This seems cleaner from a transportation standpoint. It may also help the elementary boundaries either this round or when the 12th elementary comes online.