The SD#308 Board of Education has voted to change the school district’s attendance boundaries for the 2026-2027 school year. While the changes do not impact OH students, they do include several subdivision boundaries which have been adjusted, and it does impact where some younger students will go to school.
“In general, the goal of boundary adjustments is to balance enrollment, support long-term planning, and ensure students across the district have access to strong academic and extracurricular opportunities,” said SD#308 School Board President Dominick Cirone.
Discussions for a change have been going on for almost a year with the goal to combat the increasing population in the district. The board passed the changes during the Jan. 26 board meeting.
“It’s been about ten months now that we’ve been meeting to discuss the need to address the growth in the district,” said SD#308 Chief Communications Officer Theresa Komitas. “They passed it said 7-0,” she confirmed.
The changes affect several elementary and junior high schools in the district; however, both OH and OE students will remain unaffected.
“Some students in the Auburn Lakes subdivision and elementary school are being transferred from Grant Park to Wolf’s Crossing, and the junior high kids from that area are going from Murphy to Bednarcik.,” Komitas shared. “There is a select group moving elementary from Southbury to Churchill, and from Murphy to Plank… [and] there’s a tiny little bit of just a few houses up on Orchard, by Mill, that for just elementary is going from Hunt Club to Fox Chase.”
For the community, the district hosted several events to discuss the challenges, proposed changes, and other concerns that families might have. Additionally, families were offered the opportunity to keep their student in their current school for the final year as either a fifth grader or eighth grader, so students would not have to make a change for their last year in that building.
“[However,] transportation is not provided to the previous school,” explained Cirone.
Another main reason for the changes is to help to ease the strain on buses with houses closer to the school.
“They’re trying to make it where transportation can take students to.. closer schools that they are around, rather than schools that are.. farther away,” said OH senior and SD#308 Board of Education Student Ambassador Sahar Zaheer. “So it’s easier for the students to access transportation to those certain buildings.”
As the changes are set to take place next school year, time will tell in regards to the impact and effectiveness of the new borders.
“I would think that they probably will test it out for the upcoming school year and see where it goes, and kind of look at the outcomes of what parents see, students feel,” Zaheer shared, “[and] then kind of determine if there needs to be any other changes in the upcoming years.” said Zaheer.
You can just call me Max. I write about things that interest me. This is my second year on the team and I'm in 12th grade. You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org and putting my name in the subject line. We welcome comments on our articles and feedback on our publication
