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Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

Houston school zoning meeting draws hundreds

WARNER ROBINS — The Houston County Board of Education extended its timeline to present and vote on its revised zoning maps for the 2010-11 school year, Superintendent David Carpenter announced during a public hearing on the matter Thursday at the Warner Robins High School gymnasium.

Officials originally had planned to present the final zoning plans for viewing at the Dec. 8 board meeting and would vote on the plans at its Jan. 12 meeting. Under the new timeline, the plan will not be presented until the January meeting, and the board will vote on the plans two weeks later.

MaryTherese Tebbe, executive director for 21st Century Partnership and moderator of the meeting, encouraged audience members to conduct themselves in an orderly fashion at the beginning of the forum.

“This is something we can do,” she said. “This is just a passionate group of people.”

About 300 people attended Thursday’s meeting, compared to about 350 to 400 people at the first public meeting at Houston County High School on Oct. 27.

More than 250 people submitted questions and comments through the online survey on the board’s zoning page, and also provided input through phone calls and e-mails.

Occasionally, audience members cheered or murmured at the topics brought up at the meeting, and once or twice Tebbe asked the audience to allow Carpenter or one of the school board members to answer the question.

Among the topics that dominated Thursday’s meeting was the court order dating back to the mid-1960s that mandates Houston County’s school zones to desegregate.

Carpenter acknowledged that many parents had concerns about the court order, but said the legal issues implied in it, as well as its interpretation, would be best left to the judgment of attorneys. As a result, the board would focus on answering questions on other issues during the meeting.

The previous zoning meeting angered parents after Stephen Thublin, assistant superintendent for finance and business operations, said the school zones must reflect the system’s 36 percent black population within 10 percentage points from a verbal recommendation from the Department of Justice to enforce the court order. The court order takes root in the case of Oscar C. Thomie Jr., et. al., Plaintiffs v. Houston County Board of Education, Defendants.

After the answer to one question regarding the court order caused a buzz among the audience, Tebbe responded, “I promised to read the questions. I didn’t promise they’d be the answers you wanted.”

Carpenter also told people to check the frequently asked questions document on the school board’s zoning Web site for updates.

A number of Bonaire residents in the Thompson Mill corridor were also concerned that their children would be zoned for Warner Robins High School next year while most of the students attending Bonaire Elementary and Middle schools will attend Veterans High School under the plans.

Tricia Horvath, who lives in the Southfield Plantation subdivision in Bonaire, is the mother to a home-schooled ninth-grader and a first-grader at Bonaire Elementary. While Horvath, 44, said she would have probably enrolled her son at Veterans next year, she said it would be likely he would remain home schooled if her home is zoned for Warner Robins High in the fall.

“I feel like it’ll be a bad situation for the kids,” she said. “I feel like they would be a target ... and labeled as the kids brought in to level things out.”

Also in the audience was a group of more than 60 residents in the Houston County Neighbors Association. The association was made of up members from five subdivisions that will be rezoned to Perry High School from Houston County High School under the proposed plan. Members of the group have voiced concerns about their children attending school outside of their community and the consideration of racial demographics in designing the zones.

Carpenter reiterated throughout the meeting that the proposed zones were designed to keep four goals in mind. According to the school system, the proposed rezoning maps were designed to reduce overcrowding in the high schools in Warner Robins, work within the parameters of Justice Department demographic guidelines to comply with the court order, include proposed zones of growth within each high school zone and remove zoning islands to make the zones contiguous.

To contact writer Andrea Castillo, call 256-9751.