Editor’s Note: The author’s daughter is a student at South Elementary School who may be affected by the redistricting plan.
As many as one-in-five elementary students would switch schools at the start of the 2026-27 school year under preliminary redistricting proposals the Andover School Committee reviewed Thursday.
The plan would impact students in grades K-8 as the district looks to take advantage of additional space at the new West Elementary School. Currently, there are about 590 students assigned to the 191,028 square-foot West El, while Bancroft and High Plain Elementary Schools are close to capacity.
Read the presentation presented to the school committee at Thursday’s meeting.
In addition to balancing school capacities, the plan seeks to balance the socioeconomic makeup of each school’s student body and minimize transportation distances. The meeting did not address redistricting of middle school boundaries, which will be influenced by the final plan to redistrict elementary schools.
Officials stressed the scenarios are preliminary and aim to help compare and evaluate options rather than “closely inspect boundaries.” APS has set up an interactive mapping tool where families can note areas of concern for the redistricting process. The district has also scheduled a virtual meeting for Jan. 16 to discuss the proposals with the school community.
Under the first scenario presented Thursday, which seeks to balance the capacity usage at each school, 378, or 16 percent, of students would be affected. Scenario two, which aims to reduce transportation distances, would affect 521, or 22 percent of students. Scenario number three, which seeks to balance the socioeconomic makeup of each school, would impact 402, or 17 percent, of Andover’s elementary school students.
Scenario three was not given close consideration because it does not balance school utilization. School committee members signaled they were most inclined to work on fine-tuning the first scenario for implementation.
“It seems like option two, the transportation one, isn’t going to necessarily save us money,” school committee member Emily DiCesaro said. “I was sort of thinking, ‘Oh, I bet that’s going to save us a bunch of money.’ It will impact more children. It won’t necessarily save us money.”
School committee members asked the consultant to make several considerations when they refined the first scenario, including:
- Minimizing the “flip-flopping” of students between schools, where students would be moved to a new school only to be moved back to their original school in a few years.
- Consideration of the unique challenges faced by small schools like Sanborn Elementary and explore options to increase their utilization.
- Take into account projected areas of enrollment growth when refining the boundaries
The issue has been an emotional one for families, who worry their students will have to adjust to a new school and may be separated from their friend groups. Andover Public Schools, which had originally planned to begin implementing redistricting this coming fall, said last month it will not implement a new K-8 redistricting plan until the 2026-27 school year, but the school committee is still on pace to approve the plan this spring.
School committee member Shauna Murray raised concerns that some families had taken solace in thinking their children may be moving to a “big, beautiful, new school” but may find they are placed in an older school.
“All of these schools are amazing, and I know the other parents and guardians could sell their school, and they love it,” Murray said. “To move any school is hard, and you don’t want to leave it, but any of those changes are hard. But I think there was a little bit of a bright spot in thinking it was the newer building. So just another thing for us to keep in mind emotionally as we navigate this.”