BOE nears decision on school rezoning plan

July 10 will be a big day for Vestavia Hills City Schools. The Board of Education will hear and vote on Superintendent Todd Freeman’s recommendation on a plan to rezone the school system by the 2019-20 school year.

Final details of the rezoning plan are still being decided, but Scott Leopold, of demographics firm Cooperative Strategies, said there’s one almost-certainty when it comes to rezoning: not everyone will walk away totally happy with the plan.

With lines being redrawn across the city and the new Gresham Elementary campus and middle school at the old Berry High campus coming online — as well as the removal of Central Elementary and redesignation of Pizitz Middle School as a ninth-grade campus — Leopold said it’s likely some parents and students will be zoned for a school they don’t prefer. However, Freeman said, he is hoping parents feel that their concerns were heard along the way and that every student is getting an equal education opportunity, regardless of their zoning.

Leopold presented three rezoning options to the BOE in May, based on demographic trends and the geography of the city. Freeman said those options were designed based on criteria such as proximity of homes to the schools, capacity, keeping neighborhoods zoned together and walkability or travel routes.

“We don’t want to split up neighborhoods or subdivisions where we can avoid it,” Leopold told the BOE in May.

However, compromise was the name of the game in drawing these three options, Leopold and Freeman said. It wasn’t possible to meet all of those criteria for every single home. For instance, putting all students in the school closest to them would put West’s enrollment around 1,200, while other schools would be far under their capacity. West currently serves about 750 kids.

The three options presented all keep the schools’ student populations under 93 percent of capacity. Leopold said projections show none of the schools surpassing 95 percent of capacity in the next 10 years, and anticipated growth at Liberty Park was accounted for by keeping Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park enrollment at about 60 percent of capacity.

Regardless of which plan is picked, the school system’s rezoning website shows roughly 870 kids will be moved to a new school in 2019.

The school system and Cooperative Strategies presented these options to the public in open houses and online surveys in June. Freeman said at a June 13 open house that he heard many well-reasoned concerns from parents, most frequently “about proximity and travel.”

Several parents noted that in being rezoned, their commute to school would become much longer than their previous zoning. Terry Fizer, whose two daughters are currently at Vestavia Hills Elementary East, said all three rezoning options would send his younger daughter to Gresham and his older daughter to Berry in 2019, causing him to travel back and forth across town to get them to school on time.

Eleanor Wallace, whose kids would be rezoned from West to Gresham in all three options, said the commute will get far more complicated from her home in the Altaloma Drive area, since she will no longer be able to use U.S. 31.

“I think they’re all going to be great schools, so that’s not a concern,” Wallace said.

Freeman said travel and school start times are something that the school system will have to consider and may make adjustments once a rezoning plan is selected.

Though keeping neighborhoods together was one of the stated criteria in designing the rezoning maps, some parents at the June 12 and 13 open houses pointed out spots where the zoning was not consistent. Seneca Road resident Sarah Squires said the rezoning maps split her street “down the pavement,” and she asked Leopold to redraw the lines so kids on both sides of the street would go to the same school.

Squires’ family is currently zoned for West Elementary, but their new zoning could be either East or West depending on the option the school system picked. Squires said she likes the walkability of their current zoning, but otherwise she didn’t express a preference of one school over another.

Leopold said it’s typical in the rezoning process that neighborhoods want to stay together.

The rezoning maps also include several “pockets” of neighborhoods that were zoned for one elementary school, despite the surrounding area being zoned differently. Leopold said those decisions were based on capacity and some of those pockets exist in the current zoning map, while others were chosen by finding neighborhoods that were less likely to walk to school due to topography.

Fizer, however, noted that two pockets in the middle of West’s zoning are apartment complexes that would be sent to Gresham in all three scenarios, including his own Rollingwood apartment complex. Fizer said he has seen social media discussions about apartment residents being less “vested” in the community, and worries that the apartments are being given less consideration than homeowners.

Fizer said his family has lived in Rollingwood for nine years and his wife volunteers at their school, while he has been a coach in youth sports.

“[I have] not gotten a definite answer on why apartments were placed where they were placed except for numbers,” Fizer said.

Freeman said these considerations could result in some minor redrawing of map lines before an option is presented to the BOE on July 10.

There will also be questions of how to divide teachers and staff members among the schools so that every school has “comparably” equal education experiences. Freeman said the logistics of staffing and preparing the schools will be shared after a rezoning option is recommended.

Since the public feedback was collected in June, Freeman and Cooperative Strategies have been analyzing that data to assist in making the final decision. While his decision won’t be a hit with everyone, Freeman said he will try to “make sure the decision best serves all our families, all our schools.”

“We all hate to lose any of our families, but in the end all families will be going to a great school,” West Principal Kim Hauser said at the June 13 open house. “We’re excited. Change can be good.”

Freeman will announce his decision to the Board of Education at 8:30 a.m. on July 10, in their board room at 1204 Montgomery Highway. View maps of the proposed rezoning options, as well as avideo about the process of designing the options, by going to vestavia.k12.al.us and clicking “Rezoning.”