Board of Education Study Session will focus on proposed high school boundary changes

Proposed changes to IUSD’s high school boundaries will be the subject of a special Board of Education Study Session on Tuesday, May 27. The meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Board Room of the IUSD District Office, located at 5050 Barranca Parkway. [Update on May 21:  It's just been announced that the meeting will also be broadcast on channel 39 for local Cox Communications subscribers and via AT&T U-verse’s government and public television menu.]

The Study Session agenda will include further analysis of potential high school boundary changes, as well as considerations for adjusting the most recent proposal based on community input -- including feedback from a series of parent forums held in March and April. As noted previously, the vast majority of IUSD students would not be impacted by the boundary changes under consideration. But planning for the district’s fifth comprehensive high school necessitates a modest reconfiguration that would affect some Irvine students who are currently enrolled in kindergarten through the sixth grade, as well as currently enrolled kindergarten through seventh-grade students who live within the proposed boundaries of the fifth high school. An earlier staff-recommended proposal, illustrated in the maps below, was the subject of four public meetings held in March and April. While board members will not make a final determination on May 27, they will discuss possible adjustments and may provide additional direction to staff before voting in June or July. Either way, high school boundary changes would not take effect until August 2016. A little more background IUSD is currently proposing to open its fifth comprehensive high school by the fall of 2016 with just freshmen and sophomores, adding juniors in 2017 and seniors in 2018 as the inaugural classes advance. The campus will serve Irvine’s newer communities and prevent overcrowding at Irvine, Northwood, University and Woodbridge high schools. In addition to needing its own attendance area, the new high school would necessitate boundary adjustments to ensure enrollment is balanced districtwide. (IUSD’s Board Policy calls for high schools of no more than 2,400 students when possible.) The original recommendation for addressing both needs was drafted by the district’s Boundary Advisory Committee, which began meeting in October. That panel includes district staff, as well as one principal, one teacher, one student and two parents from each of IUSD’s comprehensive high schools. At the March 4 Board of Education meeting, Tony Ferruzzo, a facilities consultant and former IUSD principal, discussed the proposed changes and delivered this presentation. The Boundary Advisory Committee then met again on April 28, and the Steering Committee met on May 16 to review possible changes to the proposal. Again, below is a map showing the original high school boundary proposal from March. The revised proposal will be presented to the board for discussion at Tuesday’s Study Session.

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