Batavia schools begin boundary talks

Keeping neighborhoods together, evening out students' time on the bus and grandfathering current students were a few of the suggestions parents had for Batavia administrators considering a boundary change on Tuesday night.

Batavia Assistant Superintendent Al McCloud asked parents for their input before he makes a recommendation to the school board on the changes in the coming months.

Both the east and west sides have one school over capacity -- Grace McWayne and Louise White. Alice Gustafson on the west side and J.B. Nelson on the east side both have empty classrooms.

And scheduled to open next year are an extra classroom at Alice Gustafson and three new classrooms at Grace McWayne.

"As I look at it, both the east and west sides have issues that need to be resolved," McCloud said.

McCloud said that moving McWayne students east of Randall Road to another school was a possibility, but that plan had its problems as well.

The east side is more complicated, with some students in the far south of the district going to school in the north end of the district, and several pockets of students going to different schools than the areas around them.

Things that would be taken into consideration in the decision would be allowing children who can walk to school to remain at those schools, and to try to keep dedicated art and music rooms at each building, McCloud said.

Parents also suggested not moving neighborhoods that had been moved in the past, only moving the minimum number of students possible and using new neighborhoods as a way of evening out enrollment in the future.

About 25 parents attended Tuesday's meeting. A second meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday at Rotolo Middle School.

The district has public input forms on its Web site, www.bps101.net.