Many parents in the Lakeville Elementary district are still unhappy with a revised redistricting proposal presented by the Oxford Schools area attendance adjustment committee to the school board on Tuesday night.
“I don’t understand the hesitance of having someone else look at this,” said committee member and affected Lake Villa resident Stephanie Fox Kroell. “We deserve to have somebody else to come in and look at this.”
In the newest redistricting proposal, 150 students will still be transferred from Lakeville Elementary to Leonard Elementary. However, fewer will now be coming from the Lake Villa Mobile Home Park.
“As a result of our last two public forums we adjusted our originally proposal,” said Lakeville Principal Sharon Carpinski.
The new proposal will transfer 22 students from the northern Lake George Rd. area, 27 from the central Lake George Rd. area, 27 from the Drahner and White Pine roads area, and 73 from the third section of the Lake Villa Mobile Home Park. A total of 149 students are suggested for transfer.
Originally, the school district had proposed to take only 22 students from the northern Lake George Rd. area and the other 130 to 140 children from the Lake Villa area.
Also, the committee has proposed that students who use the Lakeville latch-key program will still be provided the service.
“A shuttle will run from the program at Lakeville to Leonard,” explained Carpinski.
According to Carpinski, the new proposal meets all of the district’s goals: reduce the overcrowding at Lakeville Elementary, create two sections in each grade at Leonard Elementary, maintain contiguous boundary lines between the districts and optimize the use of classroom space.
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Carpinski told board members. “We are painfully aware of redrawing boundary lines within our community.”
“No redistricting plan ever pleases everyone.”
The largest objection voiced by area parents was the splitting of the Lake Villa community.
“I did not support this from the beginning, and I do not support separating a community now,” said Kroell. “Nobody has been able to justify the splitting of the Lake Villa community.”
“I don’t know how you can think of splitting up our community when we live less than two miles away from Lakeville,” voiced Lake Villa resident Valerie Richards.
Carpinski explained that the committee looked for a way that would least effect an area and there is a natural break in the layout of Lake Villa at the third development.
“It’s certainly not the most desirable thing to divide a community,” she added at the public forum. “However, it is routinely done in districts around the country. It isn’t always realistic for a highly concentrated area to expect to continue always attending the same school.”
Another large criticism made by residents was the lack of communication on the issue. Many parents voiced a concern that they were never even notified of the move and others voiced a concern that their questions have not been answered.
“These meetings have had a lot of ignored questions,” said George Garrison.
“You have a lot of people out there who are going to be effected by this who are in the dark,” said Hosner Rd. resident Rob Gazanek. “Their property values and businesses will be effected.”
Gazanek took his concern a step farther and publicly accused the school board of violating the Open Meetings Act during Tuesday’s meeting.
“These committee meetings were in violation of the State of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act,” he told board members. He continued to ask that a committee be formed to research the redistricting procedure and decision, and that the redistricting committee be reset from scratch.
Trustee Ron Mutch informed Gazanek that at no time were there more than three board members present at a committee meeting and in no way did any board member limit the choices or decision making process of committee members.
“This was the first time the whole board has heard this proposal,” added board vice-president Judy Kubina. “There was no violation.”
Residents also criticized the fact that the daycare, currently located at Oxford Elementary, is already telling parents it is moving to Lakeville this summer. The parents felt violated that they were being moved out in order to move the daycare into the building.
“The daycare has been communicating that it is going to Lakeville,” said Gazanek.
District officials said this is a false rumor, especially since no decisions have been made.
A common suggestion from many parents not satisfied with the current proposal is to hire an outside firm to research the attendance adjustment needs. The parents argued that committee members are not qualified to make a decision that involves so much information.
“I really suggest that you seek an outside company to do this,” said parent Jim Hockenberger.
“Your showing us inconclusive numbers and then telling us that they don’t stay the same,” said Ian Sylvester. “I agree we need to hire someone outside to look into this.”
“When my daughter was at Leonard, she wasn’t getting home until 5 or 5:30 p.m. and we didn’t like that,” said Amy Morawski. “Now we have to do that with our son? We’re not going to put up with that anymore, we’ve been through it once.”
The parents were repeatedly assured that the committee did a thorough job.”There is no expert in this,” said Carpinski. “Our committee used the best practices in this.”
In addition to presenting the new proposal, the committee also informed the board that Phase II of the redistricting will begin next year. In Phase II, administrators will be monitoring student numbers at Clear Lake, Oxford and Daniel Axford, which are all approaching their maximum capacity. The plan is to make adjustments over the next four years as needed.
“The need to move students at those schools was just not critical this year,” explained Carpinski. “Moving students from Lakeville to Leonard was.”
Board trustees did not voice a strong opinion at the time of the meeting and were not scheduled to make any decisions at the time. However, a few members did make some brief comments.
“I know it’s not easy or nice to move students,” said trustee Patti Smith, “but the committee’s done their best to move students to a wonderful new building.”
“I think that all of the members, especially the parent volunteers, on the committee did not know how difficult this would be,” said Trustee Ron Mutch. “My hat is off to the committee. I think this is a reasonable shot at using the facilities we have.”
Trustee Lee Barclay also voiced his appreciation for the efforts made by the committee, but also asked some questions of clarification to aid in his research.
The board will be presented with a formal recommendation at the April 8 meeting. Superintendent Brennan-Kyro emphasized the need to move forward with this decision. “We need to make a decision,” she said. “We need to move forward with this so the children have the months of April and May to make the transition.”