Columbia Public Schools approves middle school redistricting

Columbia Public Schools approved new boundary lines for middle schools Monday night.

The 6-1 vote happened just before 9 p.m. and came from the plan presented at a public hearing back in January.

That plan focused on relocating some students from Gentry Middle School to Jefferson Middle School.

Redistricting has been a contentious issue from some of those in the neighborhoods affected throughout this, especially in southwest Columbia.

The school board also moved up the construction of a new middle school to 2020. This means redistricting discussion will come back up in 2018.

The approved plan will send many students living in southeast Columbia, just west of Highway 63 and south of Nifong Boulevard, from Gentry to Jefferson Middle School. Nifong Boulevard and Vawter School Road will serve as a rough boundary between the two schools, with the exception of the Heritage Meadows neighborhood near Gentry Middle School which will continue to attend that school.

Parents and students at Monday’s meeting came to the podium to thank the board for their work, and eventually settling on the plan they did.

Board member Helen Wade told ABC 17 News she didn’t think the recommended plan from the boundary committee, released on Feb. 3, had enough time for public vetting. The plan the board approved was the result of “intense” work from the boundary committee, and kept students who had already moved recently from elementary school boundary changes from moving again in middle school.

“It did sort of serve the goal of minimizing those transitions for those students while relieving the overcrowding that we do have at [Gentry] that has to be addressed in the interim while we build that new middle school,” Wade said.

Board president Jim Whitt voted against the plan. He told ABC 17 News the plan did little to seriously reduce overcrowding at Gentry. School administrators say 859 students currently go to Gentry, well above the “comfortable capacity” of 725.

School board members will have to address redistricting for both middle and high schools starting in 2018, ahead of the opening of the new middle school in 2020. Wade said she wished the district had more time to develop the plans, but needed to move quickly in this particular case.

“Most of the boundary changes that we have implemented have involved a much longer trajectory before we arrive at a decision,” Wade said. “This time, we had to shorten that trajectory a little bit because it was important for us to give our middle school students the opportunity to have enough time to register for their classes and know where they’re going to be.”

The board still has to approve new elementary school boundaries for the opening of Cedar Ridge Elementary in east Columbia. It will decide on that at its March meeting.