Vote Monday on new school boundaries

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

The Bozeman School Board will decide Monday whether to institute new attendance boundaries for elementary schools next fall or possibly wait one year.

Postponing the start of the new boundaries and attendance rules until the 2009-2010 school year is a new alternative, proposed by school administrators for school trustees to consider.

The School Board is scheduled to vote on the controversial changes at its meeting Monday, which starts at 6 p.m. in the Willson School board room.

A large committee of parents and school staff spent months coming up with a recommendation that Bozeman switch from its current “open-enrollment” system to a more traditional system of neighborhood schools, with attendance boundaries drawn on a map. To reduce disruption, the plan recommended grandfathering in all children now in school.

The committee came up with several possible maps. In response to community comments, administrators drew some new maps.

Administrators now are recommending approval of the fifth map, Scenario E, which would allow Baxter Meadows families to send their children to Emily Dickinson School rather than the more distant Whittier School. Springhill Road-area families would instead attend Whittier. (The map can be seen on the school Web site, www.bsd7.org).

At public hearings last month, several parents urged trustees to give families more time to adjust to the new boundaries. Some said they wanted to sell their homes and move near the schools they’d like their children to attend. Postponing one year would satisfy those requests.

One of the other requests often made by parents n that younger, preschool brothers and sisters of students already in elementary school be “grandfathered” into the same schools n is not on the administrators’ list of alternatives. Doing that would postpone for many years reaching the goal of neighborhood schools, administrators have said.

Also on Monday night’s agenda is approval of new attendance boundaries for Bozeman’s two middle schools. Main Street would generally be the boundary between Chief Joseph and Sacajawea middle schools.

In addition, the trustees will vote Monday to hire a new principal for Sacajawea, to replace the retiring Diana McDonough.

Last on Monday’s agenda is an hour-long discussion of school budgets, now facing a $760,000 shortage, as well as $5 million in improvements requested by principals, for which there is no new money.

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