LCPS To Unveil School Redistricting Plans At Tuesday Meeting
Call it Cruces divided.
A new redistricting plan that will affect thousands of high school students in the City of the Crosses will be unveiled Tuesday night at a meeting expected to draw a packed house to LCPS headquarters.
Hundreds are expected to discuss the addition of Centennial High School, a new school set to open in the fall, which is expected to change redistricting lines in the city.
Meanwhile, construction continues at the $110 million dollar campus of Centennial High School in southeast Las Cruces. It will soon become the fourth high school in Las Cruces.
Tuesday afternoon ABC-7 got a sneak peek at the new redistricting plan. The previous plan called for some students from Las Cruces High, Mayfield High and Onate High School to transfer among each other. But the new plan, according to LCPS Superintendent Stan Rounds, is for students to transfer only to the new Centennial High School.
“There are no lines that are the perfect demarcation short term,” Rounds said. “Everything requires care and the one thing I want to assure the public is that as we make the transition as soon as the boundaries are drawn, we are going to be careful, we are going to be thoughtful and we’re going to take into consideration the concerns everybody has.”
Among those concerns from parents is athletics, music, band programs and even school lunch programs. But Rounds expects the new plan to calm the fears of many parents who may have been concerned that a student, say at Las Cruces High, would end up at Mayfield or Onate High, or vice versa. Rounds added that the overall goal of the plan is parity in Las Cruces and having enough schools to adequately educate all students.
“We don’t need to fear change,” he said. “This is a change that is going to be good for our district, it’s going to be good for our kids. Our high schools today are overcrowded. We don’t need to have portable buildings on all our sites and we shouldn’t. We should live inside our brick and mortar and that’s what this Centennial High School opportunity is for this district.”
Rounds explained that in two to three years, the plan should create four high schools in Las Cruces with almost equal enrollment, all less than 2,000 students. And those four schools, he hopes, will be powerhouses in the state not only in athletics and other activities, but in academics, as well.
The plan, however, is not expected to come without some growing pains. A final decision on the redistricting plan is expected next month.
The meeting will be a 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the LCPS Administration Building Board Room. The public can attend the meeting or can watch it live on CLC-TV, Comcast channel 20.
Link:Proposed redistricting map.
