Boards of education across the Tulsa area are enacting new policies to comply with a new state law intended to open up greater opportunities for student transfers between districts.
Broken Arrow, Jenks and Sand Springs’ school boards on Monday all approved local rules for school officials to follow in determining how many new transfer students could be accommodated, while the Tulsa school board got its first look at a proposal to be voted on at an upcoming meeting.
When it was being debated in the Legislature in April, Oklahoma Senate Bill 783 was described by supporters as a victory for school choice, while opponents said it is, at best, window dressing.
After approving capacity limits on taking in outside transfer students on Monday, the Board of Education for Jenks Public Schools determined with its next vote that the district only has the capacity to fill nine open seats at a single school site — Jenks Northwest Elementary School — beginning Jan. 1.
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Jenks Superintendent Stacey Butterfield said the school district is already fielding transfer requests — and even some demands, because of “misinformation” she said has been circulating since SB 783 was approved by the Legislature in the spring.
“The misunderstanding is that, ‘Well, I can transfer anywhere now. Doesn’t matter. You have to take my child.’ We’ve had people call and say, ‘Well, you have to take my child.’ No, we don’t. There’s a state law; here’s the criteria.”
Based on that new state law, each school board in the state is facing a Jan. 1 deadline to establish its district’s capacity for accepting new students from outside its attendance boundaries throughout each year.
For example, Jenks set its capacities at an average of 20 students per class for prekindergarten through sixth grades. At the secondary school levels, English/language arts class size capacity limits of 22 students will be used for grades seven and eight, and 25 students in the same subjects for grades nine through 12 were set.
Jenks Assistant Superintendent Suzanne Lair explained to board members that many other school districts are adopting similar capacity limits intended to ensure that class sizes don’t exceed limits established in an existing state statute, the Education Reform Act of 1990, which is commonly referred to as House Bill 1017.
Board member Melissa Abdo asked whether one consideration in setting capacity limits is ensuring that Jenks taxpayers aren’t faced with funding the construction of more classrooms in the future to accommodate children living elsewhere.
Butterfield responded that that is already a commonly expressed concern for Jenks taxpayers who reside within the boundaries of a school district with a steadily increasing enrollment.
The Broken Arrow school board adopted a new policy that allows the superintendent to decide the criteria to be used in determining grade capacity for each school site.
As of Monday, that capacity limit will be 20 students in pre-K through fifth grade and 28 students based primarily on English/language arts sections in grades six to 12.
Senate Bill 783 includes the new mandate that school boards determine quarterly — on the first of January, April, July and October — how many vacant seats exist based on their local capacity policy.
School districts must publish on their websites the number of openings in each grade level and school site available at that point in time so parents can apply for transfers.
Sand Springs’ school board didn’t release its precise capacity numbers Monday night, but Carrie Schlehuber, the district’s special education director who also oversees the Enrollment Center, predicted little change within the district.
“A lot of things are really not going to change for Sand Springs because we already accept a lot of transfers,” Schlehuber said.
She noted that the district accepted more than 500 transfers this year, which is about 10% of its total student population.
The biggest difference in Sand Springs might be the access to real-time information.
Although the law says the capacity data must be updated quarterly, Schlehuber said Sand Springs intends to keep the data “basically live” on its website so that parents aren’t making decisions based on outdated information.
In Sand Springs, the school board will be the entity to set the capacity, based on a recommendation from the district’s administrative team.
By law, a student can now transfer up to two times each academic year to any public school district with an opening so long as the student has no discipline or truancy issues and a parent or guardian can transport them.
If the number of applications exceeds a district’s capacity, applications are to be considered on a first-come, first-served basis. Denials can be appealed to the local school board and then to the Oklahoma State Board of Education.
The Tulsa school board got a first look at a proposed policy to comply with SB 783 at Monday night’s meeting but has yet to vote on the matter. Barring a special meeting’s being called, the board is not scheduled to reconvene until Jan. 3.
As proposed, an update to Tulsa Public Schools’ district transfer policy would have each school site’s maximum capacity determined based on the number of filled general education teaching positions, such as English or social studies, multiplied by the student-to-teacher ratio in the district’s staffing plan.
Currently, that would mean a capacity limit of 20 students for each prekindergarten classroom, up to 24 in all other elementary school grades, up to 29 in middle school and junior high classrooms, and up to 33 in high school classrooms.
However, no out-of-district student transfers under SB 783 would be allowed in any of the TPS magnet schools or magnet programs. Instead, out-of-district applicants who meet the minimum magnet program criteria and are not the child of a TPS employee would still only be considered if there are available seats after all eligible in-district applicants have been offered a spot.
Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton and Sharon Bishop-Baldwin contributed to this story.
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