Robert Messineo doesn’t get it.

The northwest Lawrence man can’t understand why the Deerfield students in his neighborhood will be split from their friends when they move on to junior high.

They live in an area bounded by Peterson Road on the south, Kasold Drive on the west, Interstate 70 on the north and Iowa Street on the east.

Rather than move on to West Junior High School with the rest of their classmates, students who live in his neighborhood have to enter a school that’s on the other side of town: Central Junior High at 14th and Massachusetts streets.

“When they start junior high school, they basically give up all their associations and friends, are sent to a school clear across town where they’re not around them anymore. And when they come home, they’re miles from where their new friends and new associations would be,” Messineo said. “It’s kind of segregating them from what they’ve had.”

But it’s no mistake.

The Deerfield split in just one of eight such splits in the city’s 15 elementary schools that are designed to keep a fairly even socio-economic and minority population mix at the city’s four junior high schools.

“The whole boundary piece is a nightmare for the board of education when those issues come up,” said Bruce Passman, the district’s deputy superintendent. “It’s just hard to balance our schools out in terms of enrollment and in terms of diversity.”

Traumatic time

Messineo, who has a daughter who will enter junior high next year, questions whether classmates should be split up when they reach seventh grade.

“This is a very traumatic time in kids’ development,” he said. “They’re trying to find themselves. They’re looking at themselves emotionally. They’re going through physical changes, mental changes, emotional changes.”

He said it’s the wrong time to remove students from familiar faces.

There’s also another issue: If students have after-school activities, it can be difficult for them to find a ride home if they live far from the school.

Another resident in Messineo’s neighborhood, Debbie Filkins, said she first raised objections in 1994 when the split was made.

Kate Stanwix, a fourth-grader at Deerfield School, shoots baskets at neighbor Robert Messineo's house after school Tuesday. The Stanwix and Messineo families are concerned that their children are being sent to Central Junior High School while other Deerfield School students attend West Junior High School, which is closer to their neighborhood.

“They wanted the people with money to start going to Central,” Filkins said. She objected not because she didn’t like Central – she had attended school there – but because of the distance.

“The after-school issue was a big deal for us. If they want to stay after, how do they get home?” she said. “Because the bus doesn’t wait. And at West, at least they can walk home.”

Perennial issue

Tom Bracciano, the district’s director of facilities and operations planning, is chairman of the district’s boundary committee. Bracciano said he was well aware of the concerns raised by parents in that Deerfield neighborhood.

“We’ve looked at it, we’ve talked about it, we look at the number of students that are in that area,” he said.

There are about 35 junior high students in Messineo’s neighborhood attending Central.

The boundary committee has studied what would happen if those students would be moved to West, Bracciano said.

Committee members look at the socioeconomic status – students who are getting free or reduced lunches – and the minority population, and they see what it would do to West’s population.

“It’s no secret West has portables now because it’s overcrowded, so it’s been difficult to deal with it,” Bracciano said.

He said the parents who live in Messineo’s neighborhood are split.

“Some want to go to West. Some want to stay at Central,” he said. “So we end up looking at the numbers to see if it’s possible. In the past couple of years it hasn’t been possible.”

The boundary committee will look at junior highs again during the 2007 fall semester to see what the populations are and how close they are to capacity.

He said eight out of 15 elementary schools are split between junior highs.

“So it’s not just Deerfield that’s being picked on,” he said.

Bracciano said the boundary committee has considered not splitting schools.

“To try to get the numbers right and keep up diversity, you end up with cross-town busing,” he said. “It’s a great idea. But when you try to put it into practice, it just doesn’t work.”

Transfers fairly common

If parents want their child to go to a different junior high, they can apply for a transfer, said Passman, the deputy superintendent.

He said out of 69 requests districtwide at the junior high level, 50 were approved this year.

And he was surprised by what he found out about transfers to West: Out of 21 requests, 20 were approved this year, he said.

“It looks like most of the ones we denied this year were at Southwest,” Passman said. “That’s a pretty high approval rate.”

* For boundary questions, contact Tom Bracciano, tbraccio@usd497.org or at 785-832-5975.