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Clovis Board Sets New Boundaries for Schools

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 21:00 CST

By Denny Boyles, The Fresno Bee, Calif.

Mar. 9--The governing board of the Clovis Unified School District voted 5-2 Wednesday night to approve new secondary and high school attendance boundaries that will take effect in August 2007.

The new boundaries, which create feeder schools for the fifth high school, under construction at Willow and International avenues, will affect 10 elementary schools.

Under the new boundaries, all students at Fugman, Copper Hills, Mountain View , and Riverview elementary schools will attend the fifth high school.

Four other schools will have split attendance areas. Maple Creek, Liberty and Fugman elementary schools will feed into both Clovis West High School and the fifth high school.

Woods Elementary School will send students to both Clovis High School and the fifth high school, depending on where they live.

Because of the need to move two schools out of the Clovis East High School area, Gettysburg Elementary becomes part of the Clovis High area and Tarpey Elementary becomes part of the Buchanan High School area.

Though there was no public comment Wednesday, the move of Gettysburg was the subject of debate, and led members Richard Lake and Susan Walker to vote against the boundary changes.

Both were concerned that moving Gettysburg, which has a high student participation rate in sports, would hurt Clovis East High School. Walker said those concerns were serious.

"Until I see a plan to alleviate those concerns, I will not be able to endorse the boundary changes," Walker said.

Clovis Unified Superintendent Terry Bradley said that the solution was to attract the right people to serve as coaches in schools underrepresented in activities at the high school level.

"The problem is not necessarily the students, but the quality of the people running the programs at those elementary campuses. We have to continue to emphasize recruiting quality coaches and teachers that will in turn encourage students to participate in co-curricular activities," Bradley said.

Lake said his decision to oppose the boundary changes was also based on his belief the district was making a mistake by trying to affect as few elementary schools as possible.

"I think we should have moved significantly more schools, and altered the boundaries completely from what we have before us. I think those moves would have been a better long-term solution, and in the end there will be a penalty we shouldn't have imposed on ourselves, which would be having to do this again," Lake said.

Bradley said the decision to make minimizing the number of schools affected by the boundary changes a guiding principle came directly from a series of public meetings held on the boundary issue.

"That was a major concern of the community," Bradley said. "And because of that, it was a major concern of this board."

The reporter can be reached at dboyles@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6659.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Fresno Bee, Calif.

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Source: The Fresno Bee

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