Redistricting Committee

Engaging the Community

A couple of weeks ago, the committee members assigned to my table were given the opportunity to hold a “Q&A session” at the Southeast elementary school PTA meeting. Several parents and teachers were present for the meeting, as well as Principal Deayon. This allowed us to engage everyone in attendance and get buy-in from the community. This was all done at the encouragement of the board and the administration.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Have group feedback/discussion of boundary lines rather than just voting/scoring of different options.

When discussing various options, I would like to have interaction/dialogue from the overall group of 40, rather than just picking an option that a group of 4 developed. Particularly for the high school line, since most everything is going to be based on that line, This also allows for those committee members that know an affected area better (whether due to living there or principal at that school), to provide their knowledge of that area to the overall group. Hopefully the planned online dialogue time (next week), will allow for some of that relative to the middle school line options.

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.

Redistricting Processes: Middle School Scenario Scoring

You received an email on Monday evening asking you to use the Board of Education’s criteria to score the Middle School scenarios that we produced at our last meeting. Early Tuesday morning, you received an email from a committee member urging you to postpone completion of the scoring until the member’s concerns about the scoring instructions were addressed. As the Committee Chair, I ask that you proceed with the scoring exercise as presented by Dr. Kimbrel. The scoring process is designed to identify maps that best meet the Board of Education’s five criteria. The committee has been provided data to assess each scenario relative to the other scenarios. As you know, socio-economic balance has been identified by the Board of Education as one of the five criteria. You may have seen that our meeting on Wednesday, October 10 is dedicated to reviewing the Middle School Scenarios. Based on feedback in the Park Hill Listens forum, we have allowed time at this meeting to refine Middle School maps (if necessary) in order to try to improve upon the criteria scores of the first set of Middle School maps the committee produced. Your scores on the existing maps are a key piece of information to establish baseline information from which to work. Asking individual members to score the maps based upon the Board’s criteria, data and guidelines is intended to (1) keep the Board’s criteria the focal point of our process and use the criteria to identify what is most important; (2) allow individual committee members to interact with the criteria and data as to understand and articulate the strengths and weaknesses of individual scenarios; and (3) to safeguard each of us from public perceptions that the committee’s work is being derailed by personal interests or interests inconsistent with the Board’s criteria. To give us a forum to have discussion on these and other topics, we have reopened the Park Hill Listens Plus/Delta forum. A primary advantage of this forum is that it is transparent to our public. Thank you for your work on this project.

I'm not in favor of A2 which splits a large neighborhood.

It seems like we have done a really great job so far of intentionally avoiding dividing neighborhoods (that we know of), but this one splits Riss Lake. I don't know the Coves area well enough to tell on the map if some of these options are splitting the area north of Barry on the east end is splitting any neighborhoods, but would be interested to know. For those of you familiar with your own areas, are there other map options that are splitting areas that might be a problem. Without having the neighborhood data available yet, and I know they are trying, it is hard to determine this factor.

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.

More Balanced Ideas

The A scenarios seem more balanced compared to B scenarios, in regard to enrollment numbers and socio-economic status. I do wish we would have had access to more data when we were creating boundaries. We were very focused on enrollment numbers, since we didn't have other information.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

It seems that most proposals are almost the same. I think with a few tweaks we can simply sort out the differences.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.