Funny how one little phrase in your contract can take on a life of its own.
Our district is bursting at the seems, so we are building three new schools over the next couple of years. Of course, this means reassigning students. Somehow, I’ve become entangled in this process to the point that it’s taking just about all of my time at work.
One may wonder what this has to do with technology. Quite a bit, as it turns out. We have implemented a new GIS system that will create maps of the district with school boundaries and demographic reports on various attendance scenarios. This isn’t very different from what I’ve been writing about recently, except that instead of geotagging photos I’m geotagging kids.
We have many things to take into consideration – the capacity of the schools, racial and socio-economic balance, and even transportation routes. However none of these considerations will mean anything to a parent if they think their child is being affected adversely. For example, we will have our new middle school sitting right next to a new elementary school. It could be that a parent with two children might have one at the middle school, but have another child at a different elementary. If they drive, they would drop one kid off at elementary school about six miles away, then drive right past a brand new elementary school to drop the other kid off at middle school. That’s going to happen to a huge number of students, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to change it, short of building a third middle school near that other elementary school. However, that’s also why we run buses.
Regardless of what we decide, someone is not going to be happy. I’m just hoping that they don’t start blaming the guy that actually draws the maps – me.