Red Clay committee stalls plan to create innovation center, seeks more community input on attendance-zone changes

A Red Clay Consolidated School District committee on secondary attendance zones and programming on June 17 failed to reach a majority to advance a proposal that would create an innovation center and reduce the district's comprehensive high schools to two.

The committee chair, Dr. L. Neesmith, said the group discussed options intended to improve equitable access to career and technical education (CTE) and other programs across the district, but committee members asked for additional stakeholder engagement before forwarding a final recommendation to the full board. "We did not get a majority vote for that," Dr. Neesmith said of the innovation-center proposal.

Why it matters: The committee's work could reshape high-school programs and attendance zones for more than 15,000 Red Clay students and affect where specialized courses are offered. Members described a large, sometimes contentious process that will inform board-level decisions next month.

Committee members said the group considered moving middle-years International Baccalaureate (IB) programming to Skyline and centralizing some high-school CTE offerings into an innovation center so that every student would have access to a broader range of career-oriented programs. That rubric was paired with space and facility questions, and several speakers at the committee meeting emphasized the need for more data and more voices from underrepresented constituencies before finalizing any plan.

The district administered a survey to families and conducted focus groups; committee members reported 11,158 survey responses were received. Committee participants and staff also ran student focus groups with middle- and high-school students and incorporated results into the discussion.

Public comment at the June 18 board meeting reinforced the demand for more transparent, equity-focused planning. Jenny Howard, a public commenter speaking by Zoom, criticized the district's past investment decisions and tied them to current enrollment declines at some comprehensive schools. "None of this is a punishment, and it isn't AI, McCain, Dickinson's fault," Howard said, adding that she believed "years of uneven investment and inaction by the Red Clay School District" helped drive the current imbalance.

Committee members and staff acknowledged those community concerns and said they want to broaden outreach to families and students who have not been well represented in prior surveys. Dr. Neesmith said members want more input from stakeholder groups that were underrepresented and that staff would collect additional information before the committee reconvenes.

Next steps: The committee will return to the board next month with either an amended recommendation or a report outlining additional outreach and the data collected. No formal board-level policy change occurred at the June 18 meeting; the committee's deliberations remain in the advisory stage.