Contact: Lisa Deffendall • First Posted: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Fayette County Public Schools leaders will host a series of public hearings to gather community input on proposed changes to elementary school attendance zones designed to alleviate overcrowding.

Schools involved are in the Clays Mill Road corridor and the Georgetown Road corridor.  Proposed changes would not take effect until the 2011-2012 school year.  None of the proposals affect middle or high school boundaries.

Letters went home Jan. 22 at Picadome, Stonewall, Garden Springs and Sandersville elementaries, where school zones would be moved. Letters also went home at Clays Mill Elementary – although that school’s attendance area has no changes proposed – in an effort to reach families who might be zoned to other schools but have children at Clays Mill because of crowding in the area.

The proposed changes would affect roughly 750 of the district’s 18,000 elementary school-aged children.

For years, the schools in the Clays Mill Road area have been overcrowded; Picadome, Stonewall, Clays Mill and Garden Springs are all at or above capacity and have portables to accommodate the additional students. To address the growing student population in the area, the district will break ground this spring on a school on Keithshire Road; it will open in August 2011.

Whenever a new school is opened, the district needs to address attendance zones. The district is sensitive to the impact school boundary changes have on families. The goal is to propose changes that will affect the fewest number of families possible, while relieving crowding and creating a school attendance zone that makes sense for the new school.

The proposed school zones would create a new attendance area for the school on Keithshire by pulling students from Picadome and Stonewall.  The room created at Stonewall would allow for students from Garden Springs and Picadome to instead attend Stonewall.

In an effort to accommodate the wishes of families, the district will extend offers to grandfather students who do not want to switch schools. Any family that has students enrolled when the changes would take effect will be given the choice of keeping their children where they are or moving them to their newly zoned schools.  We will also apply the grandfathering to siblings who would enroll while that current student remains on campus.

• Current attendance zones
• Proposed boundaries for 2011-2012

In a separate proposal, students from the existing Sandersville Elementary school zone would be moved into the Booker T. Washington Academy attendance area.

When Sandersville opened a year and a half ago, the district did not appreciably change school boundaries in an effort to maintain stability for families in the area. However, the growth in that area has been tremendous, and about 150 students who live in the Sandersville area had to be sent to other schools through the student continuation plan.

By shrinking the attendance area for Sandersville, officials hope to be able to accommodate the families remaining within the school attendance boundaries. The proposal also moves a small portion of the Mary Todd zone into the Booker T. Washington area, but that change includes an industrial area where no homes exist and no children live.

Again, grandfathering will be offered to all families who have students enrolled in Sandersville in the fall of 2011 and those younger siblings who would enroll while their older brothers or sisters remain on campus.  

• Current attendance zones
• Proposed boundaries for 2011-2012

Hearings for interested community members will be:  

• Thursday Jan. 28 at Picadome Elementary, 1642 Harrodsburg Road
• Monday Feb. 1 at Stonewall Elementary, 3215 Cornwall Drive
• Wednesday Feb. 3 at Garden Springs Elementary, 2151 Garden Springs Drive
• Tuesday Feb. 9 at Sandersville Elementary, 3025 Sandersville Road

There will be two sessions to alleviate traffic and ensure more time for discussion and questions at Picadome, Stonewall and Sandersville elementaries. We ask that interested citizens whose last names start with the letters A through M attend the 5 to 6 p.m. session, and those whose last names start with the letters N through Z attend the 7 to 8 p.m. session. Of course, people are welcome to attend whichever session works best with their schedules.

Since fewer students are affected at Garden Springs, there will be just one session, at 6 p.m.

Families with questions are encouraged to talk with their school principal or call the district office at (859) 381-4168.