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Boundaries Get Scientific

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 20, 2007

Updated: 10/18/2007 11:45 pm

CITRUS PARK - The Hillsborough County School District will turn to an outside company for help in drawing boundaries for a new middle school in Citrus Park.

The school, under construction behind Citrus Park Elementary, will be part of a pilot program that could change how the district decides what students go to what school.

The school board on Tuesday voted to hire SeerAnalytics, a Tampa company, for $15,500 to work with it on developing boundaries. Seer would develop a data analysis that links demographic and geographic information, and the company would provide models and options to the district for student assignment decisions. The district will use those to make recommendations to the school board.

Superintendent MaryEllen Elia said she hopes the results validate what the district has been doing and convinces a sometimes skeptical community that research backs up officials' proposals. Cynicism about district growth and enrollment numbers has become common, Elia said.

The district has had credibility issues resulting from boundary decisions almost two years ago when officials suggested moves that would have affected 20 northwestern Hillsborough schools.

After several contentious meetings, the district wound up reassigning 1,000 children but backed off a related plan to close Dickenson Elementary. Shortly after, the superintendent created an advisory group to solicit more input from educators and community members on boundaries.

The committee continues to meet. The Seer agreement would add a technological element to the decisions. The district hopes it makes the process more efficient and respected.

'Let's face it,' school board member Susan Valdes said at the meeting, 'we're educators - you're all educators. You're not in the business of boundaries, and you're not in the business of being demographers.'

Seer, meanwhile, is new to dealing with school districts, and Hillsborough will help explain factors specific to school decisions that the company might not have encountered when dealing with private corporations.

Steve Ayers, the district's director of pupil administrative services, will act as a liaison between Seer and the school system.

Board member Doretha Edgecomb wanted to know the bottom line - whether the change would make more parents happy.

'I tend to make half of the people mad and half of the people happy wherever I go,' Ayers said.

Although school reassignments rarely please all parents and children, Ayers said he hopes the process will help people understand all of the variables that factor into decisions on school boundaries.

The Citrus Park middle school is scheduled to open in August and draw from neighborhoods assigned to Davidsen, Farnell, Martinez and Walker. The district will hear input from parents before decisions are made and hopes to bring a plan to the board for a vote early next year.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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