The Beaverton School District will take no new out-of-district students for next school year, the school board decided Tuesday night.
A state law, passed by the 2011 Legislature, gives school boards until March 1 to declare how many seats at each school they are willing to offer to students outside their boundaries.
With little discussion about the issue, the board chose to retain the district's existing transfer students, who will become permanent transfers under the law, and add no more.
Until the law passed, a family needed permission from both their home school district and the school district where they wanted to enroll their child before the student could transfer to the new district. If a home district refused to release the student, the family had the option to pay roughly $6,000 in tuition to attend the new school or stay at the home district for free.
Beaverton board members considered two options. Option I would have opened 60 spots to new transfer students but Option II offered none.?
Beaverton Superintendent Jeff Rose said he had been working with neighboring school districts, Hillsboro and Tigard-Tualatin, to try "to keep each other as whole as possible and do no harm."
Hillsboro has not made a decision, but Tigard-Tualatin elected to take no new transfer students. The districts cannot keep students from transferring out.
Because most students transfer from neighboring districts, those in Beaverton and Tigard-Tualatin, and potentially Hillsboro, will be limited in their choices.
This school year about 287 students were approved to transfer out of the Beaverton School District and 132 were approved to enter.
In Option I, the district would have opened 15 seats at Cedar Mill Elementary, and 15 at West Tualatin View Elementary. No middle school slots were open, but the district would have taken 30 students at Beaverton High School.
One of the worries was special education. All three schools offer strong special education programs but they're full. While the schools may have open seats, the special programs do not, according to district staff.
"It costs more to educate students than $6,000," Rose said. "Our $40 million budget gap demonstrates that issue."
Hillsboro and Forest Grove school districts will make their decisions on open enrollment next week. Sherwood, Gaston and Banks school districts are taking students. Districts decide each year the number of transfer students they will take.
"This is one of those opportunities where common sense prevailed, ...." said board member Tom Quillin.
Wendy OwenSource: http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2012/02/beaverton_school_board_says_no.html
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