Redistricting is topic at special meeting

The Alleghany County Board of Education is considering having rising kindergarten through third grade students return to their home districts during the 2007-08 school year as one of the means to reduce overcrowding at Sparta and to stabilize the enrollment at Glade and Piney.

However, the members of the board stressed that the board will seek public input prior to any final decisions being made on the matter. During the Jan. 12 called meeting, Superintendent Jeff Cox talked about numbers mentioned in a previously distributed document and stated the particular document most clearly shows how many students in each grade level are out of district.

"If you look at that, you can see as far as pre-K goes, you've got eight (at) Glade Creek and two at Piney who are going to Sparta School. Kindergarten, nine at Piney, eight at Glade Creek; first grade, two and three; second grade four and four; (and the) third grade group three and six."

Cox continued, "I think the question to ask is moving into next year if we're going to begin to enforce this, the first question I have is where do you draw the line? (Do) you want to pick a grade level and say if you're below this grade level then we're going to reassign you back to your home school...and you have to send in a waiver request and then be reviewed individually or whatever or do you want to look at it, taking into consideration how many years you've been in a given school? The cleanest or neatest way to do it would be to pick a grade level and do it that way. It would be a lot less work...on principals and central office staff."

John Farrelly, director of special programs for the school system, commented, "Sparta's preschool numbers were down much more so than we anticipated say, last spring. Pre-K is almost a separate entity in discussion itself outside of really other every other grade level. You want to have that flexibility with pre-K, so I would say if you were going to go with some kind of..."

"Leave it out separate," Cox interjected. Farrelly agreed.

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