Official: Enrollment Issue Making Progress

Progress is being made in potential changes that could affect the district due to projected enrollment drops, according to Community Advisory Committee chairperson and board of education member Michelle Munley.

The committee was and has been meeting every few weeks. Discussions have centered around the district continuing its education standards while considering changes in facilities, .

The group’s most recent meeting, held on May 17, went over the current districts assigned to each school, and what the positive and negative of those currently are, and how they may be changed.

“We’ve been looking at short term opportunities and long-term opportunities in this process,” Munley said. “We’re looking at different district models and different ways of doing things.”

A new districting model, for example, could allocate individual schools for individual grades, i.e. Kossman for all the township’s kindergarten and first grade students, with holding all the township’s second and third grade students, and so on.

Munley said the process is being looked at in a pro and con fashion, and the list of cons is currently longer than the plus side.

“We’ve discussed a lot of options so far, and nothing has been thrown out yet,” she said.

Munley said about 20 to 25 of the committee’s original 40 or so members have been consistently attending the meetings and giving input.

“We’ve been able to maintain the diversity of residents involved in this process,” Munley said. “We have empty-nesters, retired residents, teachers and parents of pre-schoolers and school-aged children working on this.”

As for changes to the new school year beginning in Sept. 2012, Munley said it might be too soon for anything to be put into place just yet.

The committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 12 at . Residents are welcomed to attend.