Cuyahoga Falls board reviews three draft boundary scenarios, targets November meeting for public feedback

Cuyahoga Falls Board of Education members heard a detailed presentation Oct. 22 on draft attendance-boundary maps created in response to a planned school closure, with district staff warning the maps are preliminary and subject to revision.

Marjorie Johnson, the district staff member presenting the analysis, said the team produced three scenarios to illustrate how shifting one boundary can ripple across the system. "Changing the boundaries means and closing a school means shifting everything," Johnson said, urging the board to treat the maps as a starting point. She emphasized key unknowns: kindergarten counts are not final and some map dots represent multiple children or whole families.

The discussion focused on how each scenario balanced building capacities and bus routes. Board members and staff repeatedly returned to three constraints: kindergarten enrollment uncertainty, existing building capacities (Price and others are near capacity in some scenarios), and the additional bus drive time created when boundaries require buses to cross the city and railroad tracks. Johnson said scenario 1 was not workable once kindergarten projections were included and the team produced scenarios 2 and 3 to try to even enrollments across DeWitt, Lincoln, Price, Silver Lake and the area currently served by Preston.

Board members requested clearer, zoomable maps and overlays to allow fine-grain adjustments. "When you blow a map up big enough to read, you're going to be talking hundreds of images," Johnson said, but agreed to supply blown-up screenshots and highlighted changes between scenarios so members and the public could see what streets or clusters of homes would move between schools.

Superintendent Dr. Salico told the board he wanted families to have as much clarity as possible this year. "I would like to have it by the end of this calendar year so people could plan and have an idea in their minds," he said, while cautioning that more analysis would be necessary before a final decision.

Board members and staff agreed to focus on two scenarios for further refinement and to produce materials that make clear how kindergarten projections were incorporated (for example, presenting scenario totals as "scenario X: current enrollment + projected kindergarten = total"). They also discussed targeted outreach: the board endorsed prioritizing meetings in the communities that would be most affected if DeWitt and its attendance area shift significantly.

Next steps and timing were set in principle. The board asked staff to return with refined maps and answers to specific board questions; the presentation will be revisited at the board’s Nov. 19 meeting, with a possible final action on the Dec. 10 agenda if more work is not required. Staff also agreed to post the scenario materials online with explanatory notes and an audio or narrated video to reduce misunderstanding.

The presentation underscored operational trade-offs: small boundary moves can shift dozens of students, a school’s grade-level mix matters (to avoid overloading a single grade), and routing choices can materially change bus time and cost. Board members urged transparency in the online presentation and recommended public meetings in the neighborhoods expected to be most affected.

The board did not take formal action on any boundary item at this meeting; members instructed staff to return with refined scenarios, larger-scale maps, clear kindergarten assumptions and a public outreach plan prior to the November meeting.