Jax Superintendent reviews agenda for school boundary meetings

By Ryne Turke on November 30, 2016 at 12:19pm

Jacksonville School District 117’s superintendent gave a detailed explanation on what’s in store for the elementary school boundary meetings starting next week.

Questions have been raised about creating a neighborhood school boundary for the former Franklin Elementary School neighborhood and other district boundaries for students in District 117.

Since 2012, students who were once in the Franklin boundary region have been given the option of choosing what elementary school they would like to attend.

Ptacek says the plan has always been to redefine the boundaries, so students in the Franklin boundary had their own “home school.”

“Once the sales tax referendum passed and the middle school is going to have the sixth graders moving to the middle school, we make the decision to kind of coincide this re-boundary process with the sixth graders moving from the elementary schools into the middle school. That’s going to be happening in 2018, so I definitely want to get out far ahead of this and work with the community to develop a plan of what to do to create boundaries,” says Ptacek.

Ptacek says the district will consider an entire redistrict boundary process.

“That would be a major event that would have an impact on multiple different people throughout the community. It would cost substantial time and potentially even money with getting consultants involved to make sure we did that right. If at the end of these presentations, the feedback we’re getting from the community is ‘no, just re-do the entire district, go through that lengthy boundary process,’ that will be the recommendation to the Board. So this really  is going to be community-driven. As it currently is, I’m going to be providing three different scenarios and being open to other people looking at the map to come up with other ideas. Nothing’s fixed at this time,” Ptacek explains.

The study is being driven by basic geographic data.

The presentations start Tuesday at Lincoln Elementary, Washington Elementary on December 7th, North Elementary on December 12th, Eisenhower Elementary on December 13th and South Elementary on December 14th. All the meetings begin at 6;30 p.m.

To hear more from Ptacek, click on the link below.