Superintendent Wants To Delay Elementary Redistricting Until 2013

Interim Superintendent Randall Collins will recommend that the Groton school board delay redistricting elementary students until the fall of 2013.

Collins said Monday he spoke to a lawyer for the State Department of Education last week and was told the town would have to present its redistricting plan to the state board of education in September or October. The state board would then act on the plan, Collins said.

Given this, he said it would be unwise to move Groton’s elementary students in the fall, only to possibly move them again.

“If the state wants changes to (the plan), which they quite likely would, then we end up moving kids again,” he said.

He will recommend that the school board instead develop and adopt a redistricting plan in the early fall but not implement it until 2013. The board of education meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Fitch High School band room.

“I think people will be relieved,” Collins said. “It gives us time to do it in a rational way, rather than a knee-jerk (way), and have state approval.”

Kindergarten lottery

Consultants Milone & MacBroom, who are evaluating , are expected to discuss the progress of a plan with the Board of Education on June 12.

Collins said principals should inform their staff and parents of the delay in redistricting and the kindergarten lottery should proceed.

Groton is facing redistricting because it has a racial imbalance at Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School and pending imbalances at five other schools. The district is waiting for a letter from the state detailing the required next steps. As of June 7, the education commissioner had not signed that letter, Collins said.

A school is considered racially imbalanced if the minority population is greater than 25 percentage points above the district average.

Catherine Kolnaski Magnet was cited for racial imbalance in 2003, and its numbers have bounced up and down since, but have been worse in recent years. Most recently, the school's minority population exceeded the district average by 27.4 percent.

Middle School Redistricting

He said middle school redistricting would proceed. Groton is consolidating from three to two middle schools, so students who previously would have attended Fitch Middle Schools must be assigned to one school or another.

School Facilities Director Wes Greenleaf and the consultant are working on those plans now and may have them completed by the end of the week, Collins said.

He said it may not be possible to have direct feeder schools – or to have all of the students from one elementary go to the same middle school.