Larry Blaskey
Douglas Dispatch

Superintendent Earl Pettit explains the proposed changes that could take place to equalize students at the elementary schools.

Overcrowding at some elementary schools in Douglas is prompting the district administration to look at solutions including shuffling the grades at schools.

Douglas Unified School District Superintendent Earl Pettit  has been meeting with school PTSO groups for the past several weeks, and is slated to finish his presentations prior to Thanksgiving.

He will be making his presentation at Clawson School tonight, Thursday, November 13 at 6 p.m.; Wednesday, Nov.19, 6 p.m. at Stevenson School; and on Thursday, November 20, at 6 p.m. at Joe Carlson School.

Much of the overcrowding  problem centers around the elementary schools, but there is also a large disparity among the two junior high schools.

During a recent meeting, Pettit  explained it was a matter of student  distribution more than anything else.

Despite the fact Carlson School was moved from its former location to near the high school a few years ago, the district boundaries for each school had not been redrawn.

The district began review of the problem based on available capacity at the schools. They determined the total number of students that could attend each school by multiplying the total number of classes by 25 students.

When doing that, it showed that Joe Carlson, with only 27 vacancies; and Stevenson, 30 available  seats, were near capacity but the other three schools – Clawson, Faras and Sarah Marley – had more than 145 student spaces available  at each of the three schools.

There was also a large disparity among the two junior high schools, with 279 vacancies  at Huber Middle School and 427 vacancies  at Ray Borane Middle School.

The vacancies show a disparity in the overall class size. A student currently attending  Joe Carlson or Stevenson is more likely to have class sizes that are more than 25 to1 compared to the other three elementary schools.

Currently, the district is presenting four different options:

• Redefine the attendance  zones or redrawing districts for each of the five elementary and two junior high schools.

• Transition to a K-4th grade, 5-6, 7-8, 9-12 format thereby reducing one grade at each of the elementaries.

• Transition to a Pre-K-2, 3-6, 7-8, 9-12.

• Do nothing.

At this point, it appears that options two and three (moving to different grade levels at the schools) seems to be preferred, Pettit said.

After meeting with all of the school PTSO, a representative  from each school PTSO will come together into a larger committee to make a final suggestion for whatever  choice they feel will meet the district’s needs.

Pettit said parental school choice is built into the policy. There won’t be attendance zones, only transportation zones.

“If we do make a change, we need to have that decision made by February,” Pettit said.

Hopefully, the change will make all of our schools neighborhood schools once again.”

He said the only way that the Early Learning Center is affected is if preschool is actually moved to each of the elementary schools, as is proposed in the PreK-2 option.