School Boundary Criteria meetings in PSJ

Attend your local Port St John school's meeting week of Sept 21! - boundary changes criteria.
Port St John Community,

We must get the word out that school boundary changes are back on the table for Brevard County. We all know this ALWAYS includes Port St. John.

Making the list...
This meeting is designed to put together a "criteria" list for boundary changes. The list will then become school board "law" for Brevard school boundaries.

Deadline next week...
The deadline for the lists to be completed is next week. Why? Is that so it is passed by school board and has enough time to go through school board process to go into affect for next school year? It is said that there are no plans, as of now, for boundary changes.

Prioritize the list...
A list will be made in order of importance on how to look at boundaries.
The list can have several things to look at, capacity, proximity, bus trip length, diversity and parental input. Then the list will be put in order of importance 1 meaning most important 10- less important. So let's say "capacity" becomes #1 "proximity" #7 and "parental input" #10 on the list. Because capacity is #1 issue to resolve proximity and parental input will have no real weight in the issue.

A potential example with the above criteria...
In essence, even though we have a school in PSJ that has middle school grade level, our kids will not go to Space Coast because the capacity in nearby schools is low. Our students will need to go to a school in a nearby city. Sound familiar? Didn't we just go through this battle?

How PSJ will get lost in this criteria list business.
The difference this time is that it is ALL of Brevard is deciding the list and when this "Criteria List" gets voted and accepted by our school board they will not be able to look at PSJ independently. It will "just have to be" because the criteria was agreed on by the "community."

We are the "community"-- Prioritize "proximity."
Please try to attend your school's meeting regarding the "Community Input" regarding boundary changes. If we let this slip into the hands of others we lose the battle and our kids will attend school outside of Port St. John. Potentially we could have 4 schools bring their ideas to the school board asking to consider proximity and parental input above all else.

Talk about this over the weekend at PSJ activities. Get the word out. Forward this e-mail if needed, please cut and paste.