Boundary Plan Offers Solution for Banbury Parents
By Bill Roberts, The Idaho Statesman, Boise
Jan. 19–Banbury subdivision’s school boundary conflict in Meridian School District appears to be solved.
Just about everybody in the subdivision could get what they want.
Parents who don’t want to pull their kids out of Eagle middle and high schools to attend two schools under construction closer to Banbury could apply for in-district transfers to keep their kids where they are.
Parents who want their children to attend the new schools — Heritage Middle School and Rocky Mountain High School — would be able to send their children to those schools.
Meridian School District would bring Banbury subdivision near Chinden Boulevard and Eagle Road, into new attendance boundaries for Heritage and Rocky Mountain.
“I think it is a win-win for everybody,” said Colleen Schmit, a parent who says the quality of Eagle schools was the reason the family purchased their home in Banbury. Schmit was ready to move if district officials took her eighth-grade daughter out of the schools around Eagle.
The proposal, suggested by a committee working on new boundaries for Heritage and Rocky Mountain, still must go before the Meridian School Board for final approval, said Eric Exline, district spokesman who also oversees the boundary committee.
About 2,600 students could be affected by boundary changes for Heritage, scheduled to open in 2007 and Rocky Mountain, which will open in 2008.
If the board agrees with the plan, then about 20 Banbury kids in Eagle Middle School would probably get to stay or go on to Eagle High School instead of going to the new schools, Exline said.
The boundary committee would recommend the Eagle schools accept the transfers.
Most of the students who attend Heritage Middle School will come from nearby Sawtooth Middle School, where kids know each other.
But the handful of Eagle Middle students could go to Heritage where they know few of the students who attend, Exline said.
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