Cuyahoga Falls City — The Board of Education on Nov. 20 directed staff to refine and publish a modified version of Scenario 3 for proposed elementary-school boundary changes, with additional outreach to affected families and a promise to post Scenario 4 for transparency.

Doctor Salica, opening the boundary discussion, said the district expanded printed maps after community requests and routed suggestions to transportation staff for technical review. "We blew up the maps per that suggestion, and we sent those out, shortly after our last meeting," Salica said, noting feedback had come through ParentSquare, email and social media.

The board heard from Margie Johnson, identified in the meeting as the district’s transportation supervisor, who walked members through Scenario 2 and the staff-run Scenario 3. Johnson and board members discussed routing constraints — dead-end streets, pickup patterns and practical bus routing — that limit how neatly neighborhoods can be assigned to a single, walkable school.

Board members compared building capacities and enrollment figures. Several participants cited OFCC published capacity figures (examples referenced from 2009) and contrasted those with the district’s functional counts based on classrooms and practical use. Panel figures discussed in the meeting included DeWitt at about 388, Lincoln at about 392 and Richardson at about 331; staff repeatedly flagged Silver Lake as the most constrained site.

On numeric tradeoffs, staff said Scenario 3 displaced about 367 students in the district-wide model, roughly nine more than Scenario 2 but substantially fewer than Scenario 4, which the board characterized as having the largest number of displaced students. After live, on-the-spot edits the board stated the modified Scenario 3 lowered Silver Lake enrollment from 282 to about 274 in the example shown, and increased Price by roughly five students in the same worked example.

Board members also raised operational considerations not yet included in the raw counts: special-education room availability, cafeteria capacity and whether a school’s enrollment would require assigning an additional assistant principal. Members set an informal working target of keeping building enrollments near or below 400 students to remain manageable for school leadership.

The board agreed to the following steps: ask staff to "clean up" the modified Scenario 3 lines, produce a side-by-side comparison with the current boundaries, and post the revised Scenario 3 to ParentSquare for community feedback. They also agreed to share Scenario 4 with the public for transparency and to send targeted notices to families in Preston — who would be disproportionately affected in some options — to solicit focused feedback.

Staff warned of practical timing constraints: route bids are due Dec. 19 and drivers conduct ghost rides between Christmas and New Year’s; Johnson and others said January will be a realistic window to finalize route-related adjustments. The board reiterated that boundary discussion would continue on the Dec. 10 agenda and that a decision is expected by the end of the year for operational planning.

At public comment Rachel Loza of 768 Tallmadge Road urged the board to limit how scattered Preston children would be across multiple schools, asking that displaced Preston families be kept together where possible. "In scenario 4... Preston family would like to remain as close together as possible," Loza said.

The board adjourned the work session after the public comment period; Miss Stoker called the roll on a motion to adjourn and all voting members present recorded aye. The chair announced the meeting adjourned at 6:48 p.m.

What’s next: staff will produce cleaned Scenario 3 maps and a current-vs-proposed comparison, post the documents on ParentSquare, send a targeted notice to Preston families, and return updated materials to the board for review before the Dec. 10 meeting. The board asked staff to flag special-education and cafeteria constraints as part of the follow-up materials.