By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communicaitons Specialist
After hundreds of hours of deliberation, calculation and study, Athens ISD has released the elementary campus realignment map for the 2015-16 school year.
With the beginning of the 2015 fall semester, Athens will have three campuses serving pre-K through fifth grade students. Those will be Bel Air Elementary, South Athens Elementary and Central Athens Elementary. Central Athens is currently known as Athens Intermediate School, which, for the remainder of this school year, exclusively serves the district’s fourth- and fifth-grade population. The conversion to having a third elementary campus will help alleviate overcrowding at Bel Air and South Athens, as well as traffic congestion at those schools during drop-off and pick-up times.
In drawing the boundary lines for each of the three campuses, a team of individuals at Athens ISD factored in students’ physical addresses and grade levels, along with attributes such as ethnicity and socio-economic status. For the convenience of the public, the district has provided an assigned-campus locator tool on its website. Visit athensisd.net to use the locator tool. With the tool, you may type in any address within the Athens school district (including city and state), and the name of the assigned campus will be provided.
Studying the new map, one may note the area designated for Bel Air Elementary is smaller than the areas for Central and South. That has everything to do with population density — or the lack thereof.
“The areas served by Central and South elementaries are very rural,” explained Barry Choate, director of district operations. “A wide area on the map might only represent a small handful of children, whereas the area served by Bel Air is dense with students.”
“We have drawn and redrawn lines until we can be confident the demographic breakdown of our students at each of the three elementary schools will mirror as closely as possible the demographic breakdown of the entire district,” said Superintendent Blake Stiles. “We want every campus to reflect the reality of the overall student population, and I believe we’ve achieved that.”
Getting the realignment map drawn to such exacting specifications was no small project. Software was used to analyze student data throughout Athens Independent School District, which expands north into Van Zandt County and south into Anderson County. In many cases, district employees drove down streets to verify that the block numbers listed on the mapping software were accurate.
“Every effort has been made to avoid splitting streets down the center,” said Choate. In other words, the 100 block of a street may be assigned to a different campus than the 900 block of that same street, but two houses across from one another on the same block should be assigned to the same campus.
“Boundary lines have to be drawn somewhere,” said Stiles, “but we have been very careful and deliberate in attempting to draw those lines in a reasonable manner while keeping the demographic integrity of each campus intact.”
As a result of the realignment, the overall student populations at Bel Air and South Athens will be marginally reduced from their present numbers, which should alleviate some of the traffic congestion the two schools face. Central Athens can accommodate student pick-up and drop-off on both its north and south sides, which makes it better suited to deal with traffic. Consequently, Central will have a slightly higher student population than its sister campuses. In preparation for its transformation to a pre-K through fifth-grade school, eight new classrooms and two new restrooms are being added now at Athens Intermediate (soon-to-be Central). The construction plan includes a campus access lane running parallel to Madole Street in order to accommodate more vehicles, and additional parking spaces in front of the main office. Funding for construction at Athens Intermediate — as well as a separate project to build a new band hall at Athens High School — is being paid for in cash by the district.
The district last underwent a campus realignment in 2011. The process went smoothly then and is expected to do so again. To ensure as effortless a start to the upcoming school year as possible, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Janie Sims stressed the importance of having parents enroll their incoming pre-K and kindergarten students during the upcoming enrollment periods. There will be two enrollment days held at the District Support Center, located at 104 Hawn Street. Those dates are being scheduled and will be announced.
Bus routes reflecting the realignment are still being set and will be finalized this summer. “Rest assured,” said Choate, “bus services will always be available to students who need it.”