The Williamson County Commission selected Rick Wimberly as the new Ninth District School Board Member at its meeting January 9. 

Wimberly replaces Barry Watkins who resigned last fall.  On January 10, Wimberly met with Central Office Staff in Franklin. 

He will officially be sworn in at the January 17 School Board meeting.

The FSSD School Board has approved Scenario 10, a dual zone proposal intended to provide socio-economic balance among the district’s seven schools. After 14 months of research, data discovery and many attempts to draw equitable attendance zones, on January 9, 2012, the Board approved a scenario that moves the least number of students and allows most of the district’s current students to remain in their existing zones through the eighth grade.

• Map of Scenario 10 (as approved January 9, 2012, by the Board of Education)

Scenario 10 is five-zone plan that includes two dual zones (Johnson Elementary/Poplar Grove and Franklin Elementary/Poplar Grove).  In this scenario, approximnately 265 current students (7 percent) will be rezoned in the 2012-2013 school year. All other FSSD students will be allowed to finish in their current school feeder pattern (elementary/intermediate/middle). Of those rezoned, more than three-fourths (83 percent) will attend a school within two miles of their home. The furthest travel for any rezoned student is 4.8 miles.

Beginning in the fall of 2012, Poplar Grove will be a zoned school. It will share the northern part of its zone with Johnson Elementary and the southern part of its zone with Franklin Elementary. Families living in these dual zone areas are within two miles of either of the two schools in the zone.

Phase 1:  2012-2013
In 2012-2013, students in the following neighborhoods will be rezoned:

• Rolling Meadows, Rucker Avenue, Good Neighbor Road, Booker Road and Creekside Village (off West Main Street) West Main Street will move from Franklin Elementary to Moore Elementary (approximately 4.5 miles). Current third-grade students will be grandfathered at Franklin Elementary without transportation provided.
• Franklin Estates, located off West Meade Blvd. and Edgewood Blvd., will move from Franklin Elementary to Poplar Grove (approximately 2 miles). Current seventh-grade students will be grandfathered at Freedom Middle School without transportation provided.
• Land on both sides of Liberty Pike near the Factory, currently under development and proposed as Belle Historic Franklin apartments, will move from the Liberty zone to the Johnson zone.

With these changes, the estimated socio-economic percentages for the 2012-2013 school year are:
Franklin Elementary                  46%  (currently 65%)
Johnson Elementary                 46%  (currently 46%)
Liberty Elementary                    41%  (currently 41%)
Moore Elementary                     30%  (currently 22%)
Poplar Grove Elementary          33%  (currently 14%)
Freedom Intermediate               40%  (currently 44%)
Freedom Middle                         40%   (currently 42%)
Poplar Grove Middle                  31%  (currently 14%)

With a low number of students rezoned the first year, the district will focus its attention on a comprehensive transition plan to accommodate the smaller group of children and their families. The district is planning to offer parent meetings to explain the rezoning transition process and enable students and their parents to tour their new school and meet school faculty and staff. The receiving schools will develop specific transition plans and put in place all resources anticipated by this smaller group of students (e.g.: English Language Learners personnel, community focused events, transportation alternatives for families to special events).

Under this scenario, Poplar Grove will be at capacity for the 2012-2013 school year. That means families moving into any area of the PGS dual zone (excluding the two communities immediately zoned to PGS as listed above) during the 2012-2013 school year would be assigned to either Franklin Elementary or Johnson Elementary, depending on where in the dual zone areas they plan to reside.

Phase 2:  2013-2014
As students move or graduate out of their current schools, space will become available, which is especially critical for Poplar Grove.  This movement will enable the following zone re-assignments:

• Kindergarten students without older siblings and new families in either of the two dual zones, Franklin Elementary/Poplar Grove and Johnson Elementary/Poplar Grove, will be assigned to PGS.
• In a worst-case scenario, if the socio-economic diversity were to become exaggerated in the dual zones, the district could choose to re-assign students in specific dual zone neighborhoods rather than wait for those students to finish in their current school.

Future Phasing
The Board recognizes families’ ties to their current school and this scenario goes a long way in accommodating the many requests that have been made for students to stay in their current school. For this “grandfathered” approach to work, however, students will eventually need to merge into their new zone.

While this scenario only calls for the immediate reassignment of 265 students in the first year, the Poplar Grove zone will gradually be filled by a larger group of new students in kindergarten and beyond. As is the case for all other schools in this scenario, current Poplar Grove students and their siblings may remain through the eighth grade.

Board Goals
As of September 2011, there were over 50 percentage points between the school with highest number of students on free and reduced lunch and the school with the lowest number. In an effort to correct the impact that an imbalance of socio-economic students brings to schools, the Board turned its focus to developing rezoning scenarios using four guiding principles:

Each of these goals has been met in almost every case, with few exceptions. While the Board recognizes that moving students is not what families prefer, it is a necessary component to the district’s ability to offer excellence in teaching and learning for all. The impact of student movement will be lessened with an abundance of resources, compassion and enthusiasm for the families in each of the schools where rezoned students are assigned.

The Franklin Special School District Board will hold a work session on October 27 at 6:00 p.m. at Moore Elementary to continue discussion and to review possible zoning scenarios. The first public input session is set for November 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Liberty Elementary School.

The Board will not vote on any scenarios until the December 12, 2011, School Board meeting, enabling the Board members more time to tweak the scenarios and gather public input before making a final decision.

To read more about the Board's progress to this point, click here.

The Williamson County Board of Education operating budget continues to make its way through the budget process.

The County Commission Education and Budget committees have met during the past few weeks and have approved an amended budget of $236,977,304.  The School Board cut the budget by $2.3 million as requested by the County Commission Budget Committee during a special called meeting May 12.

Below is the remaining timeline for the budget process:

• Tuesday, June 7 at 5:30 p.m. Public hearing of WCS and other department budgets by County Commission.  The meeting will be in the Administrative Complex Auditorium.

• Monday, July 11 at 9 a.m. County Commission meets to approve all budgets including WCS budget. The meeting will be in the Administrative Complex Auditorium.