Survey results show most parents support boundary changes

MEADOW LAKES — Lisa Graham was in the first freshman class at Houston High School in 1986 and is determined that her three children attend her alma mater when they’re older.

“It’s a great school and a lot of very successful people have graduated from there,” Graham, a special education aide at Meadow Lakes Elementary, said at the Mat-Su Borough School District’s last Attendance Area Open House Monday night. “If they don’t make these boundary changes so that my kids can attend Houston schools, I’ll have to find another way to get them in. They don’t want to go to Wasilla Middle and Wasilla High.”

Graham was one of 10 parents and community members who stopped by the open house, but she seemed to be in the majority of the more than 100 people who expressed support for the proposed school boundary changes that would affect those in the Meadow Lakes area the most.

The open house was the last of four such events held by district personnel in the past month to gauge the community’s opinions on the attendance area shifts to relieve overcrowding at mostly Wasilla schools.

“My 9-year-old has told me he does not want to go to Wasilla schools,” said Graham, who graduated from Houston High in 1990 when she lived in Willow and now lives in the area deemed “Meadow Lakes Central” near Church Road.

She said her home off Sassy Street used to be in the Houston attendance area, then it shifted to the Wasilla area a few years ago. She’s hoping it shifts back because she believes her children would benefit from the smaller school atmosphere in Houston.

“Wasilla schools are way too crowded,” she said. “My kids would get lost there.”

Meadow Lakes Elementary Principal Carl Chanblee said there’s a lot of pride in Houston schools.

“It’s a good group of people there,” he said. “I think those who have experienced Houston schools are solidly behind having their kids there.”

Glancing at the boundary maps set up in the middle of the gymnasium, Wasilla parent Angie Champ said she hopes her kids will be able to stay at Wasilla middle and high schools if the boundaries are changed simply so they won’t have to be taken from their friends and staff at those schools.

Living near the Wasilla Airport off Museum Drive in Rocky Ridge, she’s hoping her seventh-grader and ninth-grader will be grandfathered in. Otherwise, she might have to take drastic measures.

“We’ll look hard to find property on the other side of Church Road so that they can stay where they are,” said Champ, who has lived in the Meadow Lakes area since 1997. “They’re saying my older kid might be able to stay at Wasilla High, but the younger one might have to go to Houston. So I’d have kids in two different high schools. You can’t do that.”

Survey results from the open houses and focus groups show the majority of respondents believe something must be done to relieve overcrowding in some schools and that boundary changes are acceptable until new schools can be built.

“Most of the people who came out to these events supported the boundary changes,” MSBSD Planner Shannon Bingham said Monday. “The greatest need for a new school now is in the Knik-Goose Bay area. People in that area will stay at Wasilla schools until a new secondary school can be built there in another four or so years. That way, they won’t have to change schools twice.”

The school board will hear the first reading of the proposed changes at its April 20 meeting and the second reading at its May 4 meeting.

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