Consultant Making Final Revisions to Groton School Redistricting Plan

If you attended one of the community meetings on Groton’s proposed school redistricting plan, your voice may have an impact.

Mike Zuba, associate senior planner with the Branford consulting firm Milone & MacBroom, said Thursday he is making final changes to the plan based on the input of parents and the Board of Education.

The basic plan on the table would move 522 children throughout Groton and affect every elementary school to correct a racial imbalance and even out student populations across schools.

Among the issues being considered in the final draft: splitting up neighborhoods, correctly placing prekindergarten programs and looking at children who may have been moved multiple times.

At a community meeting last month, several parents said they were upset about a neighborhood with 24 children that would be moved from Northeast Academy to Claude Chester Elementary.

One mother said her first-grade son would be the only one in his class at Northeast to be redistricted to Claude Chester.

Zuba said he is considering this issue and may change the plan to allow this neighborhood to stay at Northeast. But he cautioned that if he moves one group of students back, he may have to move another group somewhere else.

Zuba said he plans to keep prekindergarten programs at S.B. Butler Elementary, Charles Barnum Elementary and Kolnaski. He said he also hopes to create enough space at Kolnaski to provide more prekindergarten slots for students. Groton has 189 prekindergarten children districtwide.

The schools were forced to redistrict because the state cited the district for a racial imbalance at Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School. The school had a minority population of 60.3 percent at the time it was cited; a school is considered racially imbalanced if the minority population is greater than 25 percentage points above the district average.

The school board last discussed the plan on Nov. 5.

“All of that (discussion), plus the community input is being considered now by the consultants to create a revised plan which is the next iteration we’ll all see,” Interim Superintendent John Ramos said.

The final redistricting plan is expected to be done in the next month or so, Zuba said.