Next fall, Isabella Olori will go to kindergarten. But if the Scotia-Glenville district stands firm, Olori will be sent not to her neighborhood elementary school, but to a smaller class at Lincoln Elementary in Scotia.
Olori’s family is one of six living in the Glen-Worden Elementary School neighborhood that have been told that due to a large registration at the rural school, their children will be sent to Lincoln.
The decision angered Olori’s parents and, at Monday night’s school board meeting, served as prelude to the topic of redistricting, or the long-discussed concept of creating swing zones within the Scotia-Glenville district.
"We will be going after this wholesale going forward," said Superintendent Susan Swartz.
The growing population of students within the two rural schools — Glen-Worden and Glendaal Elementary — has been a concern for several years.
Last year, citing growing enrollment and unpredictable numbers at Lincoln, a committee recommended the district adopt the idea of "swing zones," areas within the district where children could be channeled to more than one elementary school to maintain consistent class sizes within the district.
This year, the problem became acute with 50 children registering to attend kindergarten at Glen-Worden, 43 at Glendaal, and 31 at Lincoln. Without a redistribution, Glen-Worden would host two sections of 25 children each while Lincoln would have two sections of 15 or 16 students.
In response, the district diverted six children from Glen-Worden to Lincoln.
On Monday, board member John Carpenter said he now regrets the board took no action on the recommendation to create swing zones.
"We should’ve bit the bullet then, but we dodged it," Carpenter said.
Board member Kurt Ahnert said that for many years, the district added staff whenever enrollment jumped at a particular school. But that option became too costly in more recent years. The current approach is to fill classes in a particular school and shift remaining students to another school with smaller classes. Neither approach is ideal.
"Are we going to hold the line on class size or accommodate the preferences of parents recognizing the inequities it creates? " Ahnert said. "This is not going to go away. We need to raise the issue of swing zones or redistricting."
After hearing from Olori’s father, Carpenter said he doesn’t like the district’s current course.
"We have to address this wholistically at some point," Carpenter said.
The district targeted families within the neighborhood of Washington Road, Knickerbocker and Sunnyside Road who do not have older children already enrolled at Glen-Worden. The district had hoped this approach would create less disruption than separating kindergartners from older siblings already at Glen-Worden.
But Olori would be the only student on her street sent to Lincoln. Her father, Robert Olori, said he and his wife chose their house because it is in both the village and the Glen-Worden zone. The couple say they chose to live within the village rather than the suburbs so that they and their children would know their neighbors and be involved in their community.
"We want her to go to Glen-Worden because she’ll be with everyone she knows," he Olori said. "I want her to be able to come home and go next door and say ‘hey, how did you solve that homework problem?’ "
Several board members said they sympathize with the Oloris. And with the board’s approval, Swartz said the district will contact parents within the neighborhood in an effort to find volunteers.