WCPS seeks feedback for redistricting proposal
Published 3:02 am Sunday, February 2, 2025
- The proposed redistricting plan would impact the areas marked as "Redistricting Changes." (Original map by Warren County Public Schools. Changes marked by David Mamaril Horowitz at the Daily News, indicated by overlaying the current and proposed maps, with negligible adjustments to the turquoise region. To look up your address, go to https://wcpsbg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9a8bcc4c151a4c25a03ffc45847050f4)
WCPS links the proposed redistricting map here. The district is particularly seeking feedback from affected families at wcpsredistricting@warren.kyschools.us and the WCPS Board Office at (270) 781-5150. WCPS Board of Education members’ emails are here.
BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ
david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com
Warren County Public Schools is seeking community feedback as it redistricts portions of the Lost River, Rockfield and Warren elementary school attendance boundaries.
Students within each school boundary attend that boundary’s respective school, Chief Operations Officer Chris McIntyre said. Numerous school buses generally coordinate within each boundary to transport students efficiently, he added.
The proposed draft would require children from up to 491 families from these schools to change schools, according to WCPS; that doesn’t count students who transfer from the current Warren Elementary to the new Warren Elementary. Fourth and fifth graders whose families can provide transportation to and from school may remain at their schools, WCPS stated.
The redistricting mainly results from two factors, McIntyre said: There’s the replacement of Warren Elementary with the larger New Warren Elementary, which has an additional capacity of around 250 students; and there’s WCPS’s student-per-year growth rate — around 300 students from Dec. 1, 2023, to Dec. 1, 2024.
The process aims to better balance student enrollment with school capacity to avoid overcrowding and make bus lines more efficient while looking ahead at future growth within each school and attendance boundary, McIntyre said.
These — and the consequence of requiring children to change schools — make it an important undertaking. Community members have until the Feb. 18 Board of Education meeting to submit feedback, McIntyre said.
“Redistricting is probably amongst the top two or three things that the board has to make a decision on, that we realize impacts a lot of families,” McIntyre said. “They take this extremely seriously and spend a lot of time looking at it and request that my redistricting team spends a lot of time looking at it, because we do know it’s a hard thing for families who’ve got their kids adjusted to a school to have to move schools.”
Rebecca Butts, the mother of a third-grader at Warren Elementary, is one of many parents who worry their children will need to change schools. The proposal would redistrict her home from the boundary of Warren Elementary to that of Lost River Elementary, she said.
They had moved to their home, about a quarter mile from Warren Elementary, when her son was 1 year old.
“I made a choice to move to a place where I knew I would be comfortable for long enough for him to complete his elementary career, so we would not have to move so he would have stability and consistency,” she said.
This turned out especially important, she said, as her son was diagnosed with autism.
“Change is very hard for autistic children — so, we’ve wanted some stability for him because that’s important; consistency is key to a lot of people who have different needs,” she said.
She also expressed concern about losing the existing special education support and quality of education her son has accessed at Warren Elementary.
“There’s so many variables about the choices we make and how it impacts our children and our own personal lives, and it’s almost as if a choice was taken away from us and now, we feel stranded,” she said. “I have had quite a bit of communication with the (WCPS) system, and I feel as if they do try their best to give parents and students alike enough information … However, there are always ways we can improve upon how we communicate with individuals, because not everyone receives information the same way.”
While the board meeting that WCPS presents the plan at would include an opportunity for public comment, she suggested a town hall so people could gather to voice concerns, ideas and questions.
WCPS has sent out numerous communications to families, but the latter have submitted little input. WCPS communicated the redistricting plan through a Jan. 6 letter to all families in the affected attendance boundaries; an additional letter with the proposed map to families it would directly impact; a popup starting Jan. 17 on the main website that links the proposed redistricted map; and an alert sent out through WCPS’s communication platform Infinite Campus, which has additionally translated the notifications via the language tool TalkingPoints. People can call the WCPS Board Office, and the district has also opened an email for people to submit input, questions or concerns, WCPS Communications Coordinator Lauren Thurmond added.
Yet, families’ main point of contact for redistricting input, Director of Pupil Personnel Jeff Moore, whose email was linked in the two district letters, has received just two emails as of Thursday, according to WCPS.
All five board members confirmed this week that they haven’t received community input on the proposal.
One factor to consider, WCPS Board Chairman Garry Chaffin said, is that moving more students — for example, when creating a new high school — would open up more opportunities for impacted families to comment.
In this case, he said, because it’s a replacement of one school with a larger school — and a smaller redistricting than usual — it would make sense that this replacement would result in less feedback.
Impacted areas
The redistricting concerns predominantly the west and northwest parts of Warren County, also known as the Warren Central attendance area, McIntyre said.
The redistricting entails adjusting the geographic boundaries of the multi-boundary Warren Central elementary “feeder” district. This district comprises the three schools being redistricted, along with Jennings Creek Elementary, which all together feed into Henry Moss Middle School and Warren Central High School.
Because the new Warren Elementary is placed to the west of the to-be-replaced Warren Elementary, the Warren Elementary boundary is largely replacing the Lost River attendance boundary, which previously encompassed an overwhelming swathe of northwest Warren County.
Based on transportation and the location of the new Warren Elementary, WCPS looked at roadways along the southern end of the northwest Hadley and Rockland region — previously, students who went to Lost River Elementary, McIntyre said. The school system found that it made the most sense to pull students from those areas south, largely southeast, to new Warren Elementary directly beside 165 —rather than transitioning from 165-southbound eastward onto Nashville Road to Lost River Elementary, he said.
Along the south part of that Hadley region, it also proposes continuing to expand that Warren Elementary Boundary into the current Rockfield Elementary Boundary by an additional sliver. This would occur southwest along Saltlake Creek Road roughly along either side or both sides of the Ivy Branch stream. The intention was to grab roadways in that area that made sense based on transportation routes to the new Warren Elementary, McIntyre said.
South of that — west of the current Warren Elementary and just east of Preston Miller Park, around Rockcreek Drive and Stonehenge Avenue — the Lost River Elementary district gets expanded a little north to the 231 roadway, redistricting a small portion of the Warren Elementary boundary. This, McIntyre said, was to make transportation lines more effective at balancing student numbers.
The proposal also carved some space out south of Barren River — previously Lost River Elementary — into the Richardsville Boundary, but there are no WCPS children in that area, so no one currently would be affected, McIntyre said. Rather, he added, this was a preemptive move in case students do move into the area, particularly if the area gets new housing units, McIntyre said.