Redistricting is on tonight’s Board of Education agenda (Thursday, 7 p.m., Staples High School cafeteria).
It’s a discussion item only. Many more steps and meetings lie ahead, before any decisions are made.
But parental anxiety is already high.
On social media and in conversations, there is concern about leaving friends, adapting to new schools, and more.
“NIMBY” might become “NIMSD”: Not in my school district!
The current Westport school district map. Hover over, or click on, to enlarge.
This would not, of course, be the first time some Westport youngsters would change schools.
It occurs every so often, over the years. Populations shift. Adjustments are needed. Stuff happens.
“Change is hard,” one parent wrote online.
Actually, kids are pretty resilient.
That was the point a Westport resident made to me recently.
He’d been redistricted when he was in elementary school. (And, he said, some kids changed schools twice during those years.)
He said he made friends quickly. (Some new classmates were already familiar, from outside activities.)
By the time everyone got together in Staples, he knew more people than he otherwise would have.
In fact, he said, he adjusted better to middle school and high school, because he’d already had the experience of change.
A sample size of one proves nothing, of course.
But I wonder: What the redistricting experience was like for others?
Was it stressful? Stress-free? Something in between?
Were your parents more worried than you were?
What helped you adjust to your new school? What hindered a quick adjustment?
If you changed schools during your youth in Westport — or anywhere else — click “Comments” below.
Fire away. As a new school year — with redistricting on the table — your stories are important.
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Can someone (you, Dan??) give a quick explanation, for the uninitiated, of why, in a town like Westport, re districting is even necessary.
Sure. School populations become unbalanced over time, as the demographics of a district change. Some schools have too much empty space; others are crowded. Already, officials know that when the new Long Lots Elementary School is built, it will become an attractive district for people to move to.
Thanks, Dan.
This debate has been happening since 2012! This isn’t new, the can has been kicked down the road for well over 10 years!
I was in a district where we had to build a new high school creating 2 highs schools instead of 1. The anticipation leading up to it was bad but once we started it was fine. Everyone settled and class sizes were smaller. We need to do what’s best for our students and be adults in leading our students with confidence and not anxiety!
I 100% echo the thoughts of “Westport resident.”
I didn’t grow up here, but I went to the elementary school closest to my home.
Because of a redistricting, I (and others in my immediate neighborhood) were bussed to a middle school that wasn’t close to my home – these were the days when “bussing” was a hot-button topic, so it was that and not a population shift. I still was attending a middle school with friends from my immediate neighborhood, made new friends at the new middle school, and reconnected with my elementary school friends in the summer and playing after school sports. Had friends from church, too. It was not a big deal – and I grew up in a small city-ish metro area a lot bigger than Westport.
For high school, I was back to the closest one, where all my elementary school kids were, once again. I had the small group with whom I attended all three. But kids change, too – it isn’t like friends from elementary school all shared the same interests and commonalities. Families move to town, families move away from town.
Looking back (a completely personal observation) and the closest friends that I kept from high school are actually ones that I didn’t meet until high school, because they were friendships based on commonalities. YMMV.
So re: the questions… my parents were more “worried” about it than me, but it was also attached to the hot-button issue of bussing and, as they were quite conservative, they complained about it conceptually. But I don’t think it was something that impacted me negatively, in the slightest, beyond logistical issues (longest day since we were first on the bus in the morning and last off the bus in the afternoon). It served me well to also attend a middle school with a diverse student population – not something that Westporter’s seem to experience.
I no longer recall the adjustment period of middle school. I suspect that those of us who knew one another stuck together until we got to know everyone else. I think I had a more difficult time finding my way around the new building than I did making friends. Presumably, we’re spending most of our day paying attention to the teachers, so we’re only talking lunch when we are just hanging out with people. Am I missing something? Maybe in an age when kids are armed with cell phones, they are constantly texting one another at the end of the day, but that isn’t what we did – we’d get home from school and play with the kids in the neighborhood.
At Bedford Elementary we spilt and half went to Coleytown Jr High and the other to Bedford Junior High. So we had some friends still with us and met more . By the time we got to Staples we knew so many kids, it was great.
Around 1967, we were redistricted from Coleytown Elementary to Bedford Elementary (after third grade for me). Then we went back to CJHS. It turned out to be no big deal and some people think I turned out fine.
Looks as if Saugatuck Elementary School would be better served by a fleet of rowboats than school busses..