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Sydney Cromwell
Superintendent Todd Freeman talks with parents about rezoning options at an open house at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 13, 2018.
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Sydney Cromwell
Vestavia Hills parents share their thoughts on rezoning maps at an open house at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 13, 2018.
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Sydney Cromwell
Scott Leopold (third from left) of Cooperative Strategies discusses a neighborhood zoning line with residents at an open house at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 13, 2018.
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Sydney Cromwell
Superintendent Todd Freeman talks with a parent about rezoning options at an open house at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 13, 2018.
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Sydney Cromwell
Vestavia Hills parents discuss concerns and thoughts about rezoning options at an open house at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 13, 2018.
As they prepare to present a rezoning recommendation to the Vestavia Hills Board of Education on July 10, Superintendent Todd Freeman and demographics firm Cooperative Strategies held public forums this week to gather parent feedback on the options being considered.
The three options – presented at Vestavia Hills Elementary East on June 12 and 13 – offer different ways to redraw the school zone lines that will keep all the elementary schools at roughly similar student capacity. The rezoning also has to factor in the addition of Gresham Elementary and removal of Vestavia Hills Elementary Central, the Berry property becoming a middle school and Pizitz Middle becoming a ninth grade campus.
All elementary schools will become grades K-5 with these rezoning changes in the 2019-2020 school year.
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Sydney Cromwell
The options for rezoning include the new Gresham Elementary and the removal of central Elementary, bringing all schools' capacity under 93 percent. The main difference between the map options lies in the boundaries between East and West elementary schools' zonings.
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Sydney Cromwell
The options for rezoning include the new Gresham Elementary and the removal of central Elementary, bringing all schools' capacity under 93 percent. The main difference between the map options lies in the boundaries between East and West elementary schools' zonings.
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Sydney Cromwell
The options for rezoning include the new Gresham Elementary and the removal of central Elementary, bringing all schools' capacity under 93 percent. The main difference between the map options lies in the boundaries between East and West elementary schools' zonings.
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Sydney Cromwell
Vestavia Hills' current elementary school zoning has several schools near or over capacity.
While the boundaries between East and West school zones were different under each of the rezoning options, the zones for Gresham, Liberty Park and Cahaba Heights were generally consistent. All of the plans would bring capacity under 93 percent at every school.
By contrast, Central and Pizitz are currently over capacity, and East and Cahaba Heights are above 98 percent capacity. Scott Leopold from Cooperative Strategies said his firm has run projections on growth potential in the city and none of the schools should surpass 95 percent of their student capacity in the next 10 years.
Freeman said Cooperative Strategies designed the rezoning options based on a number of criteria, including the proximity of homes to the schools, capacity, keeping neighborhoods zoned together and walkability or travel routes.
However, not all of these goals could be achieved completely, so some compromises were made when the maps were drawn. For instance, putting all students in the school closest to them would put West's enrollment around 1,200. It currently serves about 750 kids.
About 50 parents came to the Tuesday evening open house, and 20 to 30 were there Wednesday morning. Leopold said they've also had about 400 responses to an online survey so far, and he encouraged more parents to complete that survey before it closes on June 22.
Common themes among the parents' concerns were proximity and travel time, especially for some households that would be rezoned to Gresham Elementary. Terry Fizer, who is zoned for East now, said getting them to school on time will become particularly challenging in 2019, when he will have to cross town to get one daughter to Gresham, then drive back to the Berry campus for his older daughter.
The rezoning options 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 based on 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.
"[I have] not gotten a definite answer on why apartments were placed where they were placed except for numbers," Fizer said.
Another resident voiced concern about how teaching staff would be divided among the schools to ensure an equitable education for all Vestavia students. Freeman said the logistics of staffing and preparing the schools will be shared after a rezoning option is recommended, but making sure the schools have "comparable" teaching staff is a major priority for him.
Freeman said the primary concerns he has heard from parents so far are "about proximity and travel," adding that parents sharing their concerns have also given him deeper understandings of some of the nuances of each of the three zoning options.
Seneca Road resident Sarah Squires, for instance, said the rezoning options divide her street "down the pavement," and she asked Leopold and the school system to take another look at the map so the houses on that street can have the same zoning.
Freeman said right now his job is "just listening" to feedback from the open houses and the survey. He and Cooperative Strategies will take that feedback and use it to choose the best option to recommend to the board, and there may be adjustments made to the chosen map to resolve some parent concerns.
He said it's likely not everyone will be completely happy with the rezoning map they recommend on July 10, but he will try to "make sure the decision best serves all our families, all our schools."
View maps of the proposed rezoning options, as well as a video about the process of designing the options, at the school system's rezoning website. Through June 22 at 8 a.m., you can submit feedback through the school's online survey.