ShawneeDispatch.com

Board of Education members have pegged 80 percent as the magic number for changing De Soto USD 232 intra-district transfer policy.

On Monday, the Board instructed Superintendent Sharon Zoellner to develop wording for an addition to the policy that would allow students to apply for transfers into schools where enrollment was at or below 80 percent capacity. Zoellner will present the revised transfer policy to the Board for approval.

De Soto High School and Lexington Trails Middle School are the only district buildings with below-80-percent capacity. Though transportation is not provided, students outside those schools' boundary lines are free to attend them. The Board opened the doors last year to help alleviate crowding at Mill Valley High School and Monticello Trails Middle School.

A more flexible transfer policy for all district schools -- particularly one that would allow students affected by a boundary change to instead "grandfather," or remain at the same school for their final year -- has been the subject of Board conversation for the past several months.

Monday, Board members also discussed changing the district's boundary policy to automatically allow such grandfathering.

Board member Bill Waye said there were some students, even fifth-graders, who would have a difficult time adjusting if forced to move for their last year at a school. He said the district needed to allow parents to decide if their children would be best served by grandfathering.

"There are circumstances and there are situations that we need to allow parents to make that call," he said.

However, the Board ultimately decided adding a grandfathering clause in boundary policy was unnecessary and could potentially leave the door open to overcrowding at schools. An acceptable addition to the transfer policy would provide an adequate avenue for students who wished to grandfather for personal reasons but cut them off when buildings no longer had space, they said.

Board member Sandy Thierer said automatically allowing students to stay at a school would defeat the purpose of building a new one when needed to alleviate overcrowding.

"At the elementary level, we are building elementary schools because each and every one of them is at or over capacity," she said. "I think it's part of the transfer. I don't think it's part of the boundary."