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On the day after the Henrico Schools’ redistricting committee released 12 new school boundary options – more than doubling the number of options it has devised to date – more than 30 citizens publicly criticized the redistricting process during a Henrico School Board meeting.
Most of those who spoke at the Jan. 30 meeting were from one of four hot spots of particular contention – the Pemberton Road corridor, the Crestview Elementary community, the Greenwood Elementary community or the Church Road corridor.
Residents of those regions – like almost all others from any corner of the county who have spoken, written or called school system officials with comments during the five-month redistricting process – are opposed to any changes that would move their homes into different school zones.
The committee, working with consulting firm Cropper GIS, has devised a total of 22 options so far – eight for high schools and seven each for elementary and middle schools. But most of the speakers at last week’s meeting implored the board to consider altering or halting the process, saying that its scope seems to have expanded for reasons that are illogical.
The most recent maps could impact thousands of students, speakers said – more than many of them believe would be necessary to achieve the school system’s stated goals of best utilizing all available seats at county schools, reducing the concentration of poverty when possible and preparing for new, larger versions of Tucker and Highland Springs high schools and Holladay Elementary to open in September 2021.
Some speakers questioned what they consider odd dividing lines in several of the maps, while others complained about possible safety concerns that could result from moving students to schools farther away. Others said they had purchased homes specifically so their children could attend schools from which they may now be moved. One group even presented its own countywide map – dubbed Option Z – that it said could achieve the school system’s goals while moving only a few hundred students to new schools.
“This is a flawed process,” said Charles Glen resident Courtney Kuester, one of five speakers from the Crestview Elementary zone. All eight of the proposed high school maps would send either that community or the Pemberton Road corridor from Freeman High School to the new Tucker High – a move both groups are resisting.
Timothy St. George, a fellow Crestview community resident, told the board that he felt the process was akin to “using a sledgehammer to solve problems where a scalpel will do.”
Several speakers placed blame with Cropper GIS founder Matt Cropper, who is leading the efforts.
Greenwood Glen resident Heather Walker has attended many of the committee’s meetings and said she doesn’t believe the 67 committee members actually have a voice in anything other than minor changes to proposed maps.
They have worked hard “only to have Mr. Cropper basically tell them ‘Thanks for the work you’re doing, but stay in your lane,’’” she said. “He absolutely dismisses them. The goal is transparency, but it feels more like a buzzword than reality. If research and data-based feedback is being ignored, why make the process transparent at all?
“It is beginning to feel like the goal is to inundate us with as many maps as possible so that people are confused or disheartened and give up advocating for their communities. I know that is not what you want but it’s exactly how I feel right now, and I bet I’m not alone.”
New maps make subtle changes
The 12 new maps don’t vary wildly from earlier options but do include a number of subtle differences.
Many residents of the Greenwood zone – primarily those in the River Mill, Magnolia Ridge and Greenwood Glen neighborhoods – would be moved in every proposed map from all three schools for which they are currently zoned (Greenwood, Hungary Creek and Glen Allen High). They would be sent instead to a new elementary school that is planned on Winfrey Road, as well as to Brookland Middle and Hermitage High. Residents of those neighborhoods are frustrated with the idea of leaving schools they like for schools they deem to be worse, based upon student achievement metrics.
Aiden Sheldon, a fifth-grader at Greenwood Elementary, told the board that once any new boundaries take effect, students should be allowed to finish their time at any school they’ve started attending.
“Middle school is already scary,” he said, “and I don’t want to have to start it twice.”
At the middle school level, only new option D2 would restore a small part of the existing Hungary Creek zone east of Woodman Road and south of Greenwood Road to Hungary Creek. Most other options use the Woodman Road/Winfrey Road north-south line as the dividing line for that zone, sending students west of it to Hungary Creek and those east of it to Brookland.
High school Options D1 and D2 also would use that line as the divider between Glen Allen and Hermitage high schools, with students west of it going to Glen Allen and those east to Hermitage. Options E1 and E1 would move the dividing line farther west and move all students east of the Glen Allen train tracks (adjacent to Old Washington Highway) to Hermitage and those west of them to Glen Allen.
Existing Option D and new options D1 and D2 would keep the Pemberton Road corridor at Freeman High School and send the Crestview Elementary School community to Tucker High School. Options E1 and E2 would reverse that, keeping Crestview students at Freeman but moving the Pemberton corridor to Tucker. Both options E1 and E2 also would extend the Tucker boundaries southwest into the current Godwin high School zone.
Options D and D1 are identical from Tucker’s perspective, but D2 would move a section of students south of Glenside Drive, north of I-64 and east of West Broad Street from Tucker to Hermitage High. Options E1 and E2 would instead pull students from the current Godwin zone who live west of Gaskins Road and south of Three Chopt Road into the Tucker zone, much as Options A and B proposed.
‘This is ridiculous’
The county’s last comprehensive redistricting took place in 2009 and also was led by Cropper. Speaker Bill Auchmoody told the board last week that he and many others felt a frustrating sense of deja vu.
“This is ridiculous,” said Auchmoody, a resident of the Belltower neighborhood along Church Road in Short Pump. “[In] 2009, 16,000 pieces of communication came from the community to the board saying this is broken, this doesn’t work – and yet here we are with the same contractor 10 years later having the same arguments over the same boundary lines. This is insane.”
Jeff Britt, whose Pinedale Farms neighborhood in the Pemberton Road corridor was moved during the 2009 redistricting from Tuckahoe Middle and Godwin High to Quioccasin Middle and Freeman High, implored the board to leave it alone this time.
“Our area is always up for grabs, it seems.”
Britt also took issue with the perceived need for widespread changes at the high school level, considering the new version of Tucker will hold less than three dozen more students than the existing version.
“I question the rational to intentionally disrupt thousands of students just to fill 32 seats at Tucker, especially when county data shows enrollment trends are down at Freeman and at many high schools.”
Ridge Elementary PTA President Laura Johnson suggested that plans to move a neighborhood behind Freeman High School out of the Ridge zone to Tuckahoe Elementary would worsen the school’s already high concentration of poverty.
“That minor capacity gain [at Ridge] isn’t worth the burden it would create,” she said.
One speaker – Keith Lippa – actually advocated for his Crossridge neighborhood to be moved from the Longan Elementary zone to the Echo Lake zone – something the committee has proposed, too – as a way to create more logical boundaries.
Speaker Nathan Lash suggested that the board create more speciality centers or expand the ones it already operates as a way to allow more high school students to choose where they attend school, thereby potentially negating the need for forced student shifts.
The redistricting committee’s elementary school and secondary school subcommittees each were scheduled to meet this week, and the joint committee planned two combined meetings Feb. 6 (at Henrico High School at 5:30 p.m.) and 19 (at Jackson Davis Elementary at 6 p.m.). All meetings are open for the public to observe, but the committee does not accept comments.
When the school board adopts boundaries in late May, it’s expected to set an implementation date of September 2021 for some or all of them, though some boundary changes could be delayed until the following year or phased in over two years, according to school leaders.
For details, to view the new maps or to submit comments, visit henricoschools.us/redistricting.
