Editor’s Note: The author’s daughter is a student at South Elementary School who may be affected by the redistricting process.
Parents got their first look at a preliminary plan to redistrict Andover’s middle schools and an update on elementary school redistricting at the Feb. 6 school committee meeting.
Dillinger Research presented two potential scenarios for redistricting Andover’s three middle schools. The first proposal would keep elementary schools together, with High Plain and Sanborn Elementary students going to Wood Hill Middle School, West Elementary going to West Middle, and Bancroft and South Elementary students going to Doherty Middle.
The second scenario, which school committee members signaled they preferred, would split elementary schools when students enter middle school but would offer more equal utilization of the district’s buildings.
“The one thing maybe we have going for us is we’ve traditionally split up some of the schools for middle school,” school committee member Shauna Murray said. “So that’s not a new change that we’d be making. It would just be the boundary would change.”
Dillinger, APS’s consultant on redistricting, said it would revise and refine the middle school redistricting proposals. The school committee is scheduled to take a final vote on redistricting maps on March 20 and begin working on an implementation plan after the maps are approved.
The school committee also reviewed two new scenarios for redistricting elementary schools based on feedback the committee gave to the initial three scenarios presented last month. The committee was concerned that one scenario would cause transportation issues because of complicated one-way streets between the districts for South and Sanborn Elementary Schools, while the second scenario could cause downtown congestion.
The redistricting plans 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.
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 school committee has scheduled a meeting for March 8 to discuss the redistricting plan further before it votes on the final plan on March 20.
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 in December 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.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mis-attributed Shauna Murray’s quote. Andover News regrets the error.