Boundary Permits

 

The Longview School District’s boundary lines are put in place to keep an equal number of students attending the elementary, middle, and high schools.

 

It is common practice that both schools receive students from across the boundary line. However, how many is too many? The current count for incoming freshman is 240 for RAL and 310 for MM.

In charge of the permits coming to or leaving from RAL is Ms. Hudson. According to her, there is a law that allows parents to send their child to whichever school they wish.

There are extenuating circumstances where a permit should be allotted. But, most permits are not given to students for extreme reasons.

Any student who doesn’t have disciplinary problems, attendance problems, and doesn’t have a poor GPA is allowed to cross his or her boundary. Students must also have passed the WASL in order to be accepted.

A prime example of this is seen across the lake. A large percentage of students who reside in the Old West Side region are technically supposed to attend RAL. Ms. Hudson, who has taught at MM for 23 years, knows that there are a lot of students living over there who go to MM.

The two biggest culprits responsible for the swelling MM attendees are Mt. Solo and St. Rose.

Both of these schools have students from each side of the boundary lines but are predominantly on the MM side. The students generally don’t want to leave the peer group they grew up with so they all request permission to go to MM.

“Ever since Mt. Solo opened, there have been more and more requests for kids to go to MM,” said Ms. Hudson, “And that ‘Drop-out Factory’ article in The Daily News didn’t help either.”

The primary reason students put on their permit form is that they want to stay with their friends. Anyone who puts “I want to go play basketball at MM” would be rejected.

Mr. Suek, the principal at Mt. Solo was unavailable for comment.

These incoming freshmen numbers will continue grow apart as long as administration follows precedence. They have always allowed students to go against their “home school” to stay with their friends and will maintain this policy until new rules are put in place. For now, there is no solution to the problem.