SCHOOLS PANEL FURTHER STUDIES LINES

A schools boundaries committee is still crunching numbers and checking student counts before making a final recommendation to the Cape Girardeau school board.

The 15-member committee, made up of both parents and administrators from each building, has been asked to help draft a plan that would adjust current elementary school boundaries to make them more equitable racially. The recommendation likely will come next month.

A change in existing boundaries would allow the school district to shift students from May Greene and Washington schools when they close at the end of this year to other schools in the district without overcrowding.

Opening the new Barbara Blanchard school this fall also was a consideration when looking at the current boundaries, school officials said. But the concept of neighborhood schools still remains strong.

The boundaries committee meet Thursday to look at a possible discrepancy in the Franklin and Jefferson schools. Nothing was decided, so the committee will meet again next week for another look.

The committee wanted to make sure that students living in a several-blocks-wide area between Franklin and Jefferson schools weren't counted twice. If so, the discrepancy might have an effect on the boundary proposal, said Steve Trautwein, chairman.

"It may or it may not," he said. "We're double checking."

If there are any adjustments to be made, they will be minor, committee members say. Principals from the schools in question were to report back to the committee at a meeting next week.

The current boundaries were adopted two years ago after a similar committee studied the issue. But shifting populations may have affected the racial equality and populations of the schools, officials say.

When the school board adopted the current boundaries in 1997, it wanted to even out the district's minority population by making sure that each school had between an 11 and 31 percent minority population. The city's population is about 21 percent.

"We all feel we approached it fairly and logically," said Cord Polen, an Alma Schrader parent and committee member.

Alma Schrader school is the only building that likely won't have a minority population that reaches the target numbers set by the district.