Redistricting Committee

Support Staff

Kudos to the staff who has been responsible for setting up and cleaning up the work area for the committee members. Thank you for taking the time to ensure all of our needs met. We appreciate you.

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.

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

Park Hill

I have gained a new understanding of and even deeper appreciation for our school district through this process. The thoughtful comparison of Park Hill (a collection of municipalities) to more traditional suburban districts which include a single town (like Lee Summit), has been really informative. I didn’t realize that over 60% of our district is made of students living in Kansas City and the remaining number coming from small municipalities before hearing this information from Park Hill administrators. We need to make sure that all are benefitting from being part of one of the 25 biggest districts in the state—more resources and opportunities for all.

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.

Accurate Distance Measurement

It was explained early on that distance would be measured by "As the crow flies". Unfortunately, none of us can travel by air to school, and this school isn't spread out compared to other school districts in our metro area. Measure 'as the crow flies' really doesn't tell us how far or long a kid would have travel on the bus to get to school. Additionally, I don't believe any of our scenarios meet the criteria to give less than a 3. I have 2 proposals; 1) either the scale needs to change, or the measuring stick does, and 2) we measure based upon longest distance via google maps or basic driving routes.

Boundary Drawing Support

It seems like the district administration should provide more than maps with numbers of students in small boxes when the committee members are asked to draw boundaries. On both occasions, high school and middle school, committee members were only able to consider a few of the criteria when drawing lines and it was all “eye balling” and “estimating”. I can’t imagine that we don’t have access to software that could help us incorporate more criteria and be more accurate. I did a quick google search last night for “school district mapping software” and tons of things popped up. Park Hill must be using something already and I imagine the demographer could help during the committee’s drawing process too.

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.

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.

Balancing the Socioeconomic’s

After careful discussion with my wife after last night’s meeting, I’m a little concern about how the middle schools/neighborhoods will be divided within the district. It would appear, at least on paper, the southern middle schools will have one school with wealthy neighborhoods and the other school will not. I believe this will create animosity between families and students within the district. Essentially, one southern middle school will have to fight for financial assistance and volunteering while the other school, simply put, will not. I thought one of the top priorities for the committee was to balance the socioeconomic’s in the schools.

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.

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.

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

Plaza/Congress Comments

Looking at just the northern schools. Option 1&3 are the same as are 4a&5. The only difference between those is the area off Hwy 9. I'd like to keep both as an option to see which elementary school that pocket makes sense to attend, which would then dictate the middle school line. If that area goes to Chinn, then have it feed to Plaza. But if it goes to Prairie Point or Renner have it feed to Congress. Both options 1&3 or 4a&5 seem to lend themselves very well to clean elementary feeder options and I'd like to see us try and create those if at all possible. Hawthorne, Prairie Point, and Renner feed to Congress. Then Hopewell, Tiffany Ridge, and Chinn feed to Plaza.

Elementary Options - alternates

I'd like the committee to consider drawing maps for two of the south options since they are so different. Such as: A1-south and then A4 or A5 south. A1 could potentially create some cleaner elementary to middle school transitions.

Additional South boundary line sim to A4 or A5?

Would it be possible for a group to create an additional map for the Lakeview/Walden schools similar to A4 or A5? Both of those options created a much closer socio-economic balance (28%-33%) between Lakeview/Walden. It would be nice to see if that is possible and/or what it would look like for the Scenario B split. The closest the current scenario B's all have is 23%-37%.

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).

B4 - socio-economic balance % seem off

The socio-economic percentages in option B4 seem incorrect. If you average the South free/reduced %, you get 30% for options B1-B3 and B5 (~417 students). But B4 averages to 40% (~553 students) - that can't be right. That is saying there are another 136 students that fall in the free/reduced category compared to the other B options - which isn't possible.

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

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.

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.

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.

Do we need to relook at Congress/Plaza boundaries

I agree that I like the A6 map the best. However, I think most groups were more focused on the Walden/Lakevew socio/economic that the Congress/Plaza was barely looked at. All the maps for Congress/Plaza do a east/west split and there isn't much to change with those. I feel we should still look at a north/south split for these as well. Right now, there are not any options for those families to consider.

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.

The new A maps are very promising

Based on the way we scored the previous maps I came up with a score of 29 on 4 maps, A5, A6, A7, A8.. I personally like A6 but they are all very similar to the others. Our table tried to balance the Congress/Plaza socio-economic a little closer but we were unable to improve it in a way that was reasonable based on proximity to the school. It appears none of the other options were able to do it either.

B11 splits the National Neighborhood. Although there is a north and south side, the community is technically one subdivision.

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.

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.

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?

Decide before scoring on Wednesday

We need to make a decision about scoring before Wednesday 1. We should only score the bottom half of the B maps. The top halves are all the same, so we should look closely at how the new maps balance things in the South between Walden and Lakeview. By scoring the whole map you dilute the significant differences between maps. Example: Map B09 has a whole map average socioeconomic spread of 5% and map B10 has a spread of 8%. Pretty close right? Not actually. If you only look at the south, because all maps are the same in the north, Map B09 only has a spread of 1% and B10 still has 8% spread. They aren’t that close anymore. 1% difference between the two middle schools that feed Parkhill South (NICE JOB B9!). If the point of scoring is to let the best maps rise to the top, let’s not dilute the differences by including numbers from the north in scoring. The north is set. Let’s get the best south map possible. 2. We need more stringent scoring ranges on socioeconomic balance. There is a significant difference between 1% and 10% socioeconomic balance and its not fair to treat them the same. Even with the .5% discretion it’s still too broad. Also, any socioeconomic spread over 15% deserves no points. We can do better than that. Let’s do 1-5% 3 pts, 6-10 2 pts, 11-15 1pt Please like this post, or comment if you don’t, but at least go on the record for where you stand. If we wait until the next time we are all together it will be too late.