Redistricting Committee

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Using more than just enrollment balance for middle school boundary scenarios.

While I know that enrollment balance is the highest priority and it would have been a lot of information to weed through, it would have been beneficial to use other measures such as socio economic for the middle school scenarios. It might eliminate some boundary options upfront rather than waiting until after results come back.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.