CPS board narrows focus on attendance area
The Columbia Public Schools Board of Education will narrow its focus on one boundary option for its middle and high schools.
The board asked its consultant for more information on “Option #2” at a special work session on Thursday morning. The option would move more than 1,000 students across seven middle schools, with most of them moving to a new middle school under construction in southwest Columbia. The plan would also move 279 students from Rock Bridge High School to both Hickman and Battle high schools.
The new middle school would draw its student body in the first two years from Gentry and Jefferson middle schools. The latter would shed the most students of all, with 352 families currently in the boundary moving to different schools.
High school boundary changes occur primarily between Providence Road and Highway 63, south of Interstate 70. Those families would move from Rock Bridge High School to Hickman High School. Families north of I-70, from Rangeline Street to Highway 63, would move from Rock Bridge to Battle.
Scott Leopold, the consultant for CPS that developed the plans, said 65 percent of people that responded to a survey on the options favored Option 2. The boundary changes made the most geographic sense, Leopold said, because more families living close to Hickman High School would now attend.
“The level of support that we see in Option 2 is a lot higher than what we see in other districts,” Leopold said.
Jennifer Roberts, a member of the group Start2Finish, wants the board to consider letting current high school students affected by the change finish their time at the same school. Roberts said making students transfer in the middle of their high school tenure could negatively affect their grades and social lives.
“It’s not something to say, ‘Oh, it’s going to build character,'” Roberts said. “These kids have enough on their plate. They have other things that are going to build their character. They don’t need this.”
Leopold said one of the general comments the option received was about “grandfathering,” and that the board should allow for it “to the greatest extent possible.”
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