Growing by leaps and boundaries

WASILLA — If Wasilla High School graduates Haley Dampier and Megan Metcalf had been forced to attend Houston High School when they lived in Meadow Lakes, they wouldn’t have earned a year’s worth of college credits through Advanced Placement classes because Houston High doesn’t offer them.

“Both Haley and her sister Morgan benefitted tremendously from being able to opt out of Houston and attend Wasilla High,” Christina Dampier said of her daughters Thursday. “Haley earned 22 semester hours of university credit by the time she left Wasilla High and is now considered a sophomore at UAA even though it’s her first year. And I know Morgan wouldn’t have been challenged the same with her running at Houston as she is at Wasilla. She wouldn’t have broken a state record and wouldn’t be getting scholarship offers from all over the country.”

Yet changes to Mat-Su Borough school attendance boundaries recommended by a Colorado-based consultant would shift 86 Meadow Lakes students from Teeland and Wasilla middle schools and 94 Meadow Lakes students from Wasilla High to Houston secondary schools next year to relieve overcrowding in Wasilla’s schools.

For those who live on the northern end of Shrock Road, they’d be looking at a 60-minute bus ride to Houston schools, MSBSD Planning Contractor Shannon Bingham told the school board this week.

“On a snowy day, you’re looking at a two-hour commute on a very dangerous road,” board member Neal Lacy said Tuesday during a joint meeting of the school board and the Mat-Su Borough Assembly. “When parents get wind of this, there’s going to be an uproar.”

Metcalf, who graduated from WHS in 2007 with 21 college credits, said Thursday she never attended schools in her Pittman Road attendance area because her parents wanted her closer to their Wasilla offices in case of emergency.

She said that when she was in danger of being forced to switch from Wasilla High to Houston in her sophomore year because of boundary changes, her parents received advice to falsify her address so that it looked like she was in the correct attendance area.

“I used one of my friends’ addresses so I didn’t have to switch,” said Metcalf, now 22 and about to graduate UAA with degrees in accounting and finance. “It would have been a total shock to my social life and my academic life if I hadn’t been able to stay at Wasilla High. And I never would have earned the 150 credit hours I now have, which have helped me land a job at a public accounting firm in Anchorage.”

Although Bingham is encouraging the school board to grandfather in Wasilla High School students from Meadow Lakes who have been at the school for awhile, focus group surveys of parents and staff reveal that most of them don’t believe younger siblings of those students should be able to attend Wasilla High later if they no longer are in the attendance boundaries.

“If they’re at Wasilla Middle School now, they could finish middle school there, then transfer to Houston for high school,” Bingham explained Thursday after returning to Colorado.

When asked about the lack of AP courses at Houston High, Bingham said the idea is to increase enrollment at Houston High so the district can begin offering AP classes there.

“For many students, being in a smaller environment in Houston will be beneficial to them,” he added. “Houston schools have incredibly good reputations, I believe.”

Plus, there doesn’t seem to be much of an alternative at this point, he said.

Since it will be at least another four years before a new secondary school is built in the Valley, something needs to be done now to ease crowding at Wasilla schools.

“They’re building another portable classroom for Wasilla High, so they’ll have 12 next year,” he said.

The school district held three Attendance Area Open House sessions in March at Knik Elementary, Wasilla Middle and Colony Middle to educate parents, students and community members. The last one is Monday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Meadow Lakes Elementary.

At the open houses, Bingham shows residents boundary maps and explains the recommended changes.

Changes include moving 62 WMS students and 65 WHS students from the Meadow Lake South area to Houston; transferring 10 WMS and 11 WHS students in the Meadow Lake Central area to Houston; 13 Teeland and 17 WHS students from the Meadow Lake North region to Houston; transferring 17 CMS students on Farm Loop to Palmer JMS; moving 44 Sherrod/Swanson elementary students from the Soapstone/Buffalo Mine Road area to Sutton Elementary.

Bingham told the board Sutton Elementary was built for 185 students and currently has 130 open seats. However, many parents object to the 95-minute bus ride Soapstone-area students would have to take to attend Sutton Elementary.

The school board will consider the first reading of the recommended boundary changes at its April 20 meeting at Knik Elementary and vote on the issue at its May 4 meeting at Willow Elementary.

MSBSD Information Officer Catherine Esary said the granting of boundary exemptions will still be up to school principals, so parents shouldn’t panic if they feel strongly about keeping their children at a particular school.

“I think our district has been very liberal and generous with exemptions,” Esary said. “We want to continue to address as many parent concerns as we can.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.