Franklin schools will continue to meet with parents of elementary school students as they prepare to change boundaries next school year.
Franklin Community Schools hosted an open house for parents Aug. 10 at Creekside Elementary School, and will do so again at Northwood and Webb elementary schools, before presenting a narrowed down list of ideas at its Sept. 13 school board meeting. If everything goes according to plan, a new plan for district maps will be approved in November, Superintendent David Clendening said.
While other local school districts, such as Center Grove and Clark-Pleasant schools, have redrawn boundaries for individual schools when a new school opens, Franklin isn’t adding a building to its lineup.
Instead, Franklin schools is using redistricting as a measure to keep from overcrowding any schools, to make sure schools are more equitable based on the percentage of the student populations receiving free and reduced-price meals, and to balance the percentage of capacity at each school.
As a result, more schools can receive federal dollars from the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
The redrawing of boundaries is also meant to help curb the effects of future population growth and decrease the number of students at Creekside Elementary School, which, at the end of the 2019-20 school year, was at 91% capacity.
An official count for this school year won’t be released until September.
Franklin schools’ student body has remained stagnant during the past five years, averaging about 5,000 to 5,200 students a year. But administrators anticipate student growth with the addition of more than 450 houses in the Bluffs at Youngs Creek development that is going in next to the Windstar subdivision, southwest of downtown Franklin. Another 125 houses are expected to be built northeast of downtown Franklin.
Creekside had 627 students at the end of the 2019-20 school year, more than any other Franklin elementary school, according to district documents.
By comparison, Union Elementary School had 127 students that year and was at 65% capacity, documents show.
The disparity means the school district spends less money on students at Creekside — $8,423 per student — than it does at Union, where the district spent $10,804 on each student during the 2019-20 school year. Those spending figures were calculated based on the amount of money spent at each school during the school year, then divided by the number of students at the schools.
If the disparity is too great, certain schools may not receive federal funds through the Every Student Succeeds Act, known as ESSA, Clendening said earlier this year.
During the meeting at Creekside, Franklin schools presented parents with three possible plans. The plans presented had students who live west of Centerline Road attending Union Elementary School, slightly decreasing the area Creekside Elementary School covers. The district would also try to reduce Creekside’s population by changing the northern boundary.
Instead of running north to the district boundary just south of Whiteland, under two of the three proposals, Creekside’s northern boundary would end where Main Street meets U.S. 31, according to district documents.
While Franklin schools will likely add another elementary school in the coming years, the goal is to stave off construction of a new school until at least 2027, when the district finishes paying off construction of Franklin Community High School, Clendening said during the meeting.
Of the three plans, Laura Alexander, who has two students at Creekside Elementary School, preferred the plan which had the greatest balance in terms of satisfying ESSA at each building. Under that plan, four of the five elementary schools, with the exception of Needham Elementary School, would be 70-80% full, according to district documents.
The plan would also have all five elementary schools within 30% of the average spending per student across the district, satisfying ESSA, documents show.
“I just wanted it to be balanced because of ESSA; we have to be in compliance,” Alexander said. “It also has to be balanced across the board in terms of the number of students in the buildings. I want it to be balanced in the buildings.”
The next public meetings are scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Northwood Elementary School, and 6 p.m. Aug. 25 at Webb Elementary School.
