The Williamsburg-James City County School Board has decided redistricting high schools will no longer be a consideration, after months of consideration.
During a Tuesday night meeting, the school board elected to wait to consider redistricting high schools, and only focus on redistricting middle schools to fill the new James Blair school on Ironbound Road.
The decision means High Schools will keep their currently zoned boundaries for the 2018-2019 school year.
Redistricting has been contentious among parents, with some hoping to redistrict to balance the socioeconomic status of each high school, and others saying redistricting will uproot and disrupt their children’s education.
Several parents spoke about high school redistricting Tuesday, some in favor and others opposed.
Parents opposed to redistricting said the positive aspects of redistricting would not outweigh the cons.
Jennifer Morton, a local parent, said redistricting would not solve the division’s problems because it lacked a long-term plan.
“We should acknowledge the inequalities between schools… but this is an issue separate from redistricting,” Morton said. “In no way should those demands require uprooting of other students.”
“This effort, this redistricting effort, has also posed neighborhood against neighborhood in our community,” resident James Hubbard said.
School board members discussed Tuesday whether adding trailers, redistricting or waiting to make a move would be the best decision.
Although trailers could be an option depending on the school division’s capital improvement plan and budget, the board decided redistricting would not solve the issue of overcrowding at Jamestown High School, which is now at 111 percent capacity, according to redistricting consultant Cooperative Strategies.
With high school redistricting off the table, the school board will continue developing redistricting maps for the new middle school boundaries.
The James Blair Middle School has been taking shape for about a year. Redistricting middle schools is necessary to fill the new school when it opens in September 2018.
There are three options for redistricting on the table. Most school board members said they prefer option 2, which would move part or all of certain neighborhoods to James Blair, including Ford’s Colony, Powhatan Secondary, Monticello Woods and the Grove.
School board member Lisa Ownby said she would prefer to “tweak” the option 2 map because some neighborhoods would be split up unnecessarily. The option 2 map would take four families from Ford’s Colony, which Ownby said was an “accident” by the consultant.
Other board members also echoed her interest in “tweaking” maps. The board decided to have a redistricting consultant look at all three maps and see which would be the easiest to tweak.
The goal is to have the socioeconomic status difference be within 10 percent for each middle school.
The school board will continue with discussions about redistricting middle schools at their Jan. 2 meeting.
See below for all redistricting maps.
