Map courtesy of Shelby County Schools.
About 80 students will be rezoned from Chelsea Park Elementary to Forest Oaks Elementary in the 2017-18 school year. The current Forest Oaks zone is highlighted in blue, while the new FOES zone is pink.
Children in a few Chelsea neighborhoods will ride different school buses and walk different hallways in August, as the school system rezones to reduce overcrowding at Chelsea Park Elementary.
Shelby County Schools announced in the spring that it was rezoning neighborhoods in subdivisions near County roads 11 and 47 from Chelsea Park to Forest Oaks Elementary. Forest Oaks was built in 2015 and is operating at about 80 percent capacity, Deputy Superintendent Tom Ferguson said.
“Chelsea Park is over 100 percent capacity. They have a couple portable classrooms at this point, and we’re beginning to look at next year and the possibility of adding more portables,” Ferguson said.
During the April 4 Chelsea City Council meeting, Chelsea Park Elementary Principal Jeanette Campisi-Snider said without rezoning, her school would have to get more portable classrooms for the 2017-18 school year.
“Although I will personally miss a lot of the families that we will lose, in order to keep the quality of education that we’re all used to, the county had to do something,” she said. “This was the best move, I think, that they could have done.”
This rezoning will affect about 80 children. When Forest Park initially opened, Ferguson said they intentionally made the school slightly under capacity since it was new. However, there has been an increase in new housing in Chelsea, growing the school-age population.
“The entire Chelsea zone is a growing zone,” Ferguson said. “That has probably accelerated their growth beyond what we would have imagined at that point in time when FO was built.”
Ferguson said the school system found areas that were easy to rezone, some of which neighbor the area already zoned for Forest Oaks. Some of the affected homes may actually be geographically closer to their new school than the old one, he said.
“Rezoning can be an emotional issue,” Ferguson said, but the school system picked its new zones carefully, and he has only heard positive responses so far.
“It has gone very, very smoothly. We’ve had no issues that have come out of that,” he said. “Making that change from one school to another where relationships have been established can be a little stressful. We understand that.”
The addition of 80 children at Forest Oaks — and their absence at Chelsea Park — will mean some changes in the teaching structure. Ferguson said those details are still being worked out, and the schools also have to deal with the uncertainty of how many new students will be entering the kindergarten classes. However, Ferguson said class sizes will not be affected.
New bus routes also will be configured for the 2017-2018 school year, but since some of the homes on County roads 11 and 47 were already zoned for Forest Oaks, Ferguson said he anticipates the bus routes will not need to make major changes.
Parents who would like to make a special request for their child to stay at Chelsea Park can submit a waiver application near the beginning of summer. Ferguson said a zoning committee will consider these applications on a case-by-case basis over the summer.
For a map and full list of the rezoned addresses, along with bus route information, go to shelbyed.k12.al.us/transportation.htm.
