Hundreds of Muscogee students would have to change schools if rezoning is approved
Hundreds of students would be assigned to a different school if the Muscogee County School District implements its developing plan to change attendance zones.
The goal, MCSD officials say, is to make bus transportation more efficient and serve families better.
No proposal has been finalized. The administration expects to conduct public hearings and bring a final recommendation to the school board in the fall. If approved, the new attendance zones would go into effect for the 2022-23 school year.
During the board’s annual retreat, conducted Feb. 27 via videoconference, superintendent David Lewis and other administrators explained the problem they’re trying to solve.
Residential growth, population shifts and magnet program expansions have made bus routes inefficient, they said. Attendance zone dividing lines too often are in neighborhoods instead of along main roads, many buses are crossing each other, and some students have rides lasting longer than 45 minutes, said MCSD student services director Kevin Scott.
“That’s really not acceptable,” he told the board.
MCSD is planning to adjust attendance zones throughout the district, although fewer than 1,000 of the more than 30,000 students would be assigned to a different school, Lewis said. He told the board he wants the rezoning to be done “with the least amount of disruption possible to plan for the foreseeable future in a very proactive way.”
Prime example
Administrators presented the board an analysis of one especially troublesome attendance zone as an example of the overall problem.
Shaw High School’s attendance zone is the district’s largest and is projected to have the most residential growth in the next five years. The zone has 15 housing developments under construction, totaling 1,607 lots — with only 43% completed, said MCSD transportation routing specialist Erika Grantham.
“We are proposing to shrink the Shaw attendance zone so we can give it the space it needs,” Grantham told the board. “Doing so, it’s going to affect the school borders that surround Shaw High School,” which are Aaron Cohn Middle School, Mathews Elementary School, Midland Academy, Midland Middle School, Blackmon Road Middle School and Eagle Ridge Academy.
“The borders we have now give us a pretty hard time with transportation,” Grantham said.
The borders between these attendance zones split the Charleston Place subdivision off Veterans Parkway:
- Northside and Shaw high schools
- Veterans Memorial and Blackmon Road middle schools
- North Columbus and Eagle Ridge elementary schools.
Charleston Place has 27 MCSD students. And six buses drive in and out of this one subdivision each school day, Grantham said.
“It’s pretty much wasting our resources,” she said.
Another example: Less than 2 miles south on Veterans Parkway, in the Maple Ridge subdivision, Joyce Street also is split between attendance zones.
“We have just over a dozen similar situations like this throughout the school district,” Grantham said, “and this is what we would like to clean up as far as realigning the attendance zones.”
Scott showed the board a proposed timeline for the rezoning:
- Spring or summer 2021: Present full proposal to the board for input.
- September 2021: Formal presentation to the board.
- October 2021: Conduct public hearings.
- November 2021: Present final recommendation to the board for approval.
- Spring 2022: Initiate first phase of rezoning.
- August 2022: Implement rezoning plan.
“This will take some time,” Scott said. “This is not an easy fix.”
