Redistricting Committee

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Allow opportunity to provide input during the drawing phase for both scenarios.

While I realize it would have taken more time, I would have liked the opportunity to help draw middle school district lines on both high school maps. Maps will now be going forward for further consideration that only had half of the committee’s input on middle school lines. While I will be able to provide commments on the other maps, it’s not the same as working on the collaborative drawing process.

Direct Feeders

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I think splitting the Congress/Plaza boundaries using I-29 make great sense. The Lakeview/Walden is more complicated and could use more work

Our group was so focused on enrollment that we had to go back and tweak it for socio-economic balance. We could spend more time as a large group looking at all the other criteria and giving feedback that can be used while we are in session. I think we can do this without splitting up sub-divisions.

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

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

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%.

Socio-Economic Balance

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.