School redistricting plan would affect five schools

Moves to ease overcrowding in some Lexington elementary schools will require realignment of attendance zones for the 2011-12 school year, Fayette County Public Schools officials say.

This is the county's first significant change in school boundaries in about five years. District officials estimate that 750 students could change schools under the proposals.

Two separate cases are involved.

On Lexington's south side, a new elementary school is planned at Keithshire Way and Drayton Place to reduce overcrowding in that area. Boundary changes for three schools — Garden Springs, Picadome and Stonewall — are necessary, officials say.

"Picadome is full; Garden Springs is full," said Jack Hayes, director of student achievement support. "There is no capacity in that part of town right now. We need another school there."

On the north side, the district plans to shrink Sandersville Elementary School's attendance area to ease overcrowding. Sandersville opened in 2008 but already is over capacity.

School officials have scheduled a series of forums during the next few weeks for residents to comment on the proposed changes. It's expected that the Fayette school board would act on the changes in February.

Families that don't wish to change schools could remain where they are under a new, more generous "grandfathering" policy, said Hayes. Under the policy, a student now enrolled at any affected school could remain there. And as long as that student remained enrolled at the school, his or her siblings would be admitted. However, that would not apply to siblings who enroll after the current student has moved to middle school.

Hayes said that's still much more generous than the previous policy, in which only fourth- and fifth-graders were grandfathered in.

The reason? Some families welcome boundary changes as an opportunity to move to a new school while others that have become strongly invested in a particular school don't like the idea of change.

"That's why we're doing the grandfathering, to let them stay if they want to," Hayes said Monday. "We would hope, for example, that people would want to go to the new Keithshire school. But we won't force them."

District officials propose to create an attendance zone for the new Keithshire school by taking some of Picadome's attendance area along the south side of New Circle Road, plus a chunk of Stonewall's area east of Clays Mill Road. And Stonewall would take in some of the northern part of Garden Springs' attendance area.

Similarly, a large part of Sandersville Elementary's attendance area east of the Norfolk Southern Railway tracks would be shifted to Booker T. Washington Academy, which also would get part of the Mary Todd area.

Sandersville was built for about 650 students and now has about 665 enrolled, officials said. In contrast, Booker T. Washington has room for about 300 more students, district officials said.

This story was originally published January 26, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "School redistricting plan would affect five schools."