By Meg Peters
Review Co-Editor
The Lake Orion School Board approved up to 100 additional Schools of Choice students to be eligible to enroll in the 2016-17 academic year.?
The target will fluctuate according to how many students are enrolled in SOC at the end of the year, and will not exceed 10 percent of any one grade level district wide.?
There are 380 students in the SOC program as of the school board meeting last Wednesday, which would take the threshold to 480 students.?
The number is an internal target only, and the district has the ultimate say in just how many students they take come 2016-17.?
The stipulation not to exceed 10 percent in any grade, kindergarten through eighth, does not apply to the buildings.?
So for schools like Pine Tree Elementary and Blanche Sims where more than 10 percent of the student population is SOC, the district will be especially careful moving forward working to balance the equation.?
But, it’s not something that can be changed overnight, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Rick Arnett said, and that the inevitable redistricting of the schools would grant more control to place students in the future.?
‘We will be very mindful of where the high populations are currently and we won’t take new students there,? he said.?
This could mean placing more SOC students in the three focus schools: Orion Oaks, Stadium Drive and Carpenter Elementary, which administration is currently discussing.?
Over the next three years, if the district continues the 10 percent rule, eventually only 50 students would be needed at the kindergarten level, Arnett calculated.?
The reason: all the other grades would max out.?
As of now, the district is budgeting for 75 SOC students for the 2016-17 school year.?
Arnett said he hasn’t heard of any district who started utilizing the SOC program and stopped, and frankly that it would not be the smartest thing to do.?
About 147 Lake Orion students currently attend other districts for their SOC programs, with 129 attending Oxford Schools, so Lake Orion’s program is one way to offset this.?
Each SOC student comes with their own per pupil funding. In some cases it’s lower than Lake Orion’s state aid of about $8,000, and in some cases it is higher.?
On average Lake Orion receives about $7,600 per SOC student.?