The Line Creek Loudmouth

Redistricting Committee Map

I heard from a good source but can't get an offical confirmation from PHSD staff since it is spring break that the Redistricting Committee selected Map 3A3.

The map is posted below along with the back up information.  I have never liked the 1,2,3,4 grading system and will let readers grade the Committee's work using the old fashioned or the 1-4 system or some made up touchy-feely self esteem system they prefer.  The criteria are listed in no order although the committee voted that socio-economic was their top priority.

Enrollment Balance
Goal: Enrollment will be balanced among all elementary schools.

Comment: Chinn has 364 projected students and Renner has 389 projected students.  English Landing and Tiffany Ridge are over 500 projected students.  Balanced?

Socio-Economic Balance
Goal: The schools will have balanced socio-economic populations that reflect the demographics of the entire community.

Comment:  4 schools are twice as high as the lowest school.  Was there a measured goal that was attempted to be achieved that looked at the mean and standard deviation or was an arbitrary number pulled out of a hat?

Transportation Distance and Safety
Goal: Transportation distance will be minimized in order to protect student safety.

Comment: People south of 73rd Street are being bussed to Renner and people within a mile of Renner are being bussed to Prairie Point.   People from the Coves are being sent to Line Creek.  People from Misty Woods have to ride a bus by Southeast or Graden to get to English Landing.  The map makes some single family low density neighborhoods go a long away from home and doesn't allow stay at home moms with the opportunity to walk to school. 

Maintain Neighborhoods and Subdivisions
Goal: Boundaries will be structured to keep district subdivisions together within one school attendance boundary.

Comment:  After doing what should have been done before the maps were ever presented to the public, Wildwood and the Coves were put back together.  Embassy Park is split over 3 schools.  The area south of the Weatherby Lake dam is split.

Minimal Attendance Area Changes
Goal: The number of students that change schools will be minimized.

Comment:  About 1574 students will change if my Illinois public school math education is correct.  Scenario 5 had that number over 1100.  3A3 is better than the first 3A and 3B maps presented.

Future Growth Considerations
Goal: Boundaries will anticipate residential growth and economic trends in the community.

Comment: This one is hard to quantify.  From some of the people I talked to during the public hearings, this didn't pan out the last time this happened.  Chinn has plenty of capacity to grow but only one potential subdivision that would add students.  With the economy and market being what it is, I do see the potential for more growth as the southeast part of the district continues to change over as the Baby Boom generation either voluntarily or involutarily leave the houses where they've lived their latter adult life.  Enlish Landing is only going to lose 14 kids and may have capacity issues as some subdivisions continue to grow.  I could see Tiffany Ridge having capacity issues as the housing market improves.

School Board Race Shake Up

Got some very interesting good news and bad news.  The bad news?  Casey Beane is withdrawing from the Park Hill School Board race.  The great news?  It's due to an addition to the family which will be coming in the fall which will be their third child.  I don't want any speculation except I will say that in today's society we lack fathers who put the best interests of their family first.  Kids are only little once and I want to commend Casey for serving his family first over serving the school district. 

The offical release will post when I get a copy of it.

New Park Hill administrators

I attended the open house for Dr. Springston on Thursday.  He brought his lovely wife and two children who, assuming they buy a nice house in southern Platte County, will be attending schools in the district  I arrived when four other principals had made it there from the end of the school day and so I wanted to let them talk a little business and get home.  I spent a couple of minutes introducing myself and describing my role in my day job and filled him in on some of the things to do outdoors in the area before I had to run to a 1st grade musical.

At the last board meeting, Bill Redinger was hired as the new assistant superintendent for human resources replacing Mark Frost.

Park Hill PTA Forum (3/13/12)

I attended Tuesday night's Park Hill PTA forum.  Due to the redistricting meeting, I was about 30 minutes late.  It appeared to me that 85-100 people attended over the course of the evening.  Attendees were able to submit questions to the moderator who allowed each candidate a set time period to respond.  One question that was asked that I found interesting was a one-word description of their candidacy.  Below are the candidates with a link to the official district candidate response page and any interesting links or information I found using an internet search engine.

Casey Beane, an account executive in the health care field from Northwest Missouri State, summarized his campaign as "genuine." He has a Facebook page.

Allison Wurst,an account manager at Henry Wurst, Inc. which I gather is a printing company, responded "students."  She is Facebooking also.

Chris Seufert, an assistant prosecutor with Platte County, will provide "judgement."  He is running again and has his own website.

Fred Sanchez,a nurse anesthetist and graduate of the University of Kansas, is motivated by "redemption."  I couldn't find a web page so if you know of one, please let me know so I can post it.

Ed Stephens, an electrical engineer from UMR, is going to give us "transparency".  You can check out his website at your own risk.

The Platte County Citizen provided a recap of the meeting here.

KCTV5 has a potentially negative story for the area about one of the candidates here.

3/13/12 Redistricting Commitee Meeting Summary

The Committee reviewed 3 new scenarios.  They are posted at the bottom of the post.  Each individual committee member is to submit their vote for the preferred scenario by 5PM on 3/14/12 which will then be refined by staff and prepared to submit to the School Board on Thursday March 29.

Option 3A2 restored the Coves and Wildwood but was questioned on some of the small pockets that were non-contiguous.  Interesting how no one has questioned the large non-contiguous pocket for Renner that splits the City of Platte Woods.  It overshot English Landing by 41 students which had to be done in order to somewhat maintain the original 3A map but keep some of the Picture Hills area, within walking distance, at English Landing.  It left 2 schools over 35% of F/R lunch and one of those was Tiffany Ridge which has the potential for additional growth due to the platted subdivisions north of Route 152.  That growth will reduce that percentage over time.  It split the Quail Run apartments which was a concern voiced by multiple staff members.  In my opinion, that gives someone the ultimate choice of which school to attend.  I bet some folks in single family neighborhoods wished they had that choice.

Option 3A3 restored the Coves and Wildwood but split Embassy Park into 3 different schools.  It didn't balance enrollment as it left Chinn 70 students under its target enrollment, overshot Graden by 31 which, from what I have heard at the meetings, has capacity issues due to its autism program, undershot Renner by 69 kids.  It left 4 schools over 35% of F/R lunch.

Option 3B2 had to be presented to force the quesiton of how serious the committee was in working to balance the socio-economic numbers.  It provoked some serious discussion and I sure didn't win any Dale Carnegie awards for working it up.  There was a discussion on why it was even being discussed.

There was some spirited discussion on the scenarios and why/where they came from.  The PHSD has a perception problem with one of the elementary schools.  This is a once in a decade chance to work on changing that and preventing that from happening to some of the other schools.  I feel strongly that the perception issue needs to be fixed and redistricting is the first way to start doing that.  The district needs to look at allocating additional resources also.

It matters to look at all the criteria and I attempted to do that.  The committee said that socio-economic balance was their top priority.  Is that the case?  I will let anyone who attended the meetings comment on if the committee stayed consistent.  We will find out when the committe recommendation is released.

I found an interesting article by F. John Rey on an About.com Guide.  The last part summarized my attitude tonight:

"Leaders dream dreams. They refuse to let anyone or anything get in the way of achieving those dreams. They are realistic, but unrelenting. They are polite, but insistent. The constantly and consistently drive forward toward their goal. You can be a leader. You will be - when it matters enough to you."

This matters enough to me to speak out as I have during this process.  The district needs to change the perception of one of the elementary schools and not replicate that perception at an additional 3 schools.  Folks living in the western part of the district are kidding themselves if they think that the perception issue won't impact the district as a whole over time.

How did PHSD get to this point, I don't know.  When the percpetion issue arose the district should have moved to eliminate it.  I, for one, admit guilt myself for being apathetic and sticking my head in the sand thinking Park Hill will always be the best district in the metro.  Unfortunately we have way too many people that think that.  Through this process I have met people who share the same concern about where the district will be in 25 years.

To recap, the original 3A map is located here.

The original 3B map is located here.

Below are the tweaked scenarios with the supporting data. 

Park Hill redistricting

Tonight the Park Hill Elementary redistricting committee met. The committee had a roundtable discussion to open what they thought had heard over the last week of public meetings.  After waiting a while, I was once again the loudmouth at the meeting airing my concerns about the proposed maps. The committee received a summary of the comments tallied by the general type of comment (more balance, don't swap kids, keep neighborhoods together, etc). The committee was asked to pick a map they wanted to keep and what changes they would like to see done to it. I created two maps that tweaked scenarios 3A and 3B.

THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL MAPS NOR ARE THEY UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE.

I wanted to let the committee know that I had proposed these to Dr. Kelly and I didn't want anyone to think I was passive aggressively (English majors, please comment if that's even remotely a proper phrase) trying to snowball the committee.

THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL MAPS AND ARE NOT UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE.

THESE ARE MY OWN SUGGESTIONS FOR TWEAKS TO THE PROPOSED MAPS GIVEN THE FEEDBACK FROM THE PATRONS.

Again, these are what I recommend to the 25 person committee and are not under consideration. My goal in this whole process is to minimize switching, balance our socio-economic population, and keep neighborhoods intact.

THESE ARE NOT MAPS UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE AND JUST SUGGESTIONS BY THE LINE CREEK LOUDMOUTH.

See the suggested revisions to map 3A below

Park Hill redistricting

THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL MAPS NOR ARE THEY UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE.

THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL MAPS AND ARE NOT UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE.

THESE ARE MY OWN SUGGESTIONS FOR TWEAKS TO THE PROPOSED MAPS GIVEN THE FEEDBACK FROM THE PATRONS.

Again, these are what I recommend to the 25 person committee and are not under consideration. My goal in this whole process is to minimize switching, balance our socio-economic population, and keep neighborhoods intact.

THESE ARE NOT MAPS UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE COMMITTEE AND JUST SUGGESTIONS BY THE LINE CREEK LOUDMOUTH.

See the suggested revisions to map 3B below

 

Park Hill Redistricting 3/6/2012

Follow the Park Hill elementary school redistricting process here:

http://www.parkhill.k12.mo.us/Pages/Redistricting.aspx