Tulsa Public School Board Approves New Attendance Boundaries

Ashli Sims, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- The Tulsa School Board approved new changes to the district map Friday.

The student shuffle at Tulsa Public Schools continues, but district leaders say they're one step closer to being settled. More than a dozen schools will empty their halls for good this summer, so the school board had to decide where thousands of displaced students will go next year.

See the new attendance boundary map.

"I think we got a lot of answers to questions parents have had and hopefully will reduce the uncertainty going forward," Brian Hunt, Tulsa School Board President, said.

The Tulsa School Board met in a special meeting to the redraw the district map. At one point, the district said about 7,000 students would be impacted by school closures and boundary changes, but the final map only impacts about ten percent of the student body or roughly 4,000 students.

5/3/2011 Related Story: After Consolidation, Tulsa Public Schools Works On Redrawing Boundaries 

While district leaders say the Webster feeder pattern had the most geographic change, it was changes to the East Central area that will impact the most students. More than 1,300 students are caught between those new lines.

Sandburg was closed, so those students will now go to Kerr and Cooper. To relieve overcrowding at Disney, some of those students will shift to Columbus.

And some Kerr, Peary, and Cooper students will shift to Lewis and Clark, which will be an elementary school instead of a middle school next year.

Read the consolidation plan

District leaders say they're going to get to work immediately to send out letters to all 41,000 students and their families to tell them which school they will attend next year.

"Is there going to be a train wreck in the fall? The staff spent enough time doing their homework that I think we're going to avoid that," Hunt said.

Even though the new boundary lines are on the books, there are still some question marks, particularly students on transfers. District leaders say that's going to be worked out on a site by site basis and they couldn't say just how many transfer students would be affected.

Students who have already been accepted into Magnet programs should not be affected by these new boundaries.

Parents should start getting letters in the mail, if they have new school assignments, by the middle of next week.