“We need to do a complete rezoning,” Johnson says, “and clean it up.” A committee comprising teachers, businesspeople and representatives from the community will study maps to see where students live and where they go to school. Johnson says the effort is an attempt return students more consistently to their neighborhood schools. Currently, and as a result of attempts to integrate students from various socio-economic backgrounds, students may live in one neighborhood but travel a dozen or more miles to the school that they attend. In his South Side district, for example, about 40 percent of Carter Springs Elementary students are bused halfway across town to school from Fairfield Court, he says.

Moving students closer to home “cuts down on transportation costs, especially with the price of gas being what it is,” he says. “It also tells us if an area is under-capacitated.”

The board will impanel a committee to study rezoning by the start of the 2005-2006 school year, Johnson says. — Brandon Walters

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