Parents concerned Park Hill redistricting will divide the neighborhood

PARKVILLE, Mo. — More than 1,500 Park Hill students could be on the move to new schools next year. The school district is opening a new Angeline Washington elementary school on Parkville's west side and redrawing its boundaries in the process.

Park Hill's redistricting advisory team submitted its final recommendation to the school board Thursday night. Concerned parents packed the meeting.

The school district wants a system where all the students stay together from kindergarten thru high school. But parents say they are splitting up neighborhoods in the process.

The team says it evaluated 5000 pieces of feedback from 24 neighborhoods. Thursday one of six neighborhoods showed up in full force that would be split up under the plan with only students South of MO-45 staying at Graden Elementary and Lakeview Middle.

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"The current proposal is unacceptable because it divides the National at elementary and middle school levels creating a significant disruption in our community," parent Drew Roberts told the school board.

"We moved here specifically for the school district and these schools my daughter Addison is in 6th grade at Lakeview has formed meaningful relationships that we'd like to keep," Heather Dickman said.

Addison and her friend Hayden are two of the 464 middle school students who would change schools next year if the recommendation is approved.

"It's not the best fit for my vision of my education and Lakeview staff and my friends overall most of whom live on the south side," Addison said.

"My friends and I don't understand the thought process of splitting kids up who have gone to the same school for 6 years and live 2-4 minutes away from each other," Hayden told the board.

The district says decisions were based on metrics including impacting a minimal amount of students , transportation and safety distance, socioeconomic balance and enrollment balance. The district set a goal of 450 students at each elementary school and 680 at each middle school. It held several open houses and online forums.

"We followed the process as a community. We formulated very fair compromises and the board completely disregarded our ask," National resident and parent Janette Gordinier said.

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"We certainly evaluated the asks we had before us. It might be unfortunate that some of those asks may not be able to be accommodated and that's because of all the metrics that we used to make sure that our whole community could be served by the decisions that we made," Park Hill Chief Communications Officer Kelly Wachel said.

One of the issues the Park Hill School Board says it still has to address is whether older students like incoming 5th and 8th graders could be grandfathered in and stay at their schools as long as parents are willing to drive them. A final vote on the recommendation is set for December 12.