For parents, one way to try to keep their student at Sugar Grove Elementary, if the boundary slide approved earlier this year puts that child on the Russell side of the line, is to submit a transfer request.
Many parents have already and the Warren County School District's answer is clear: We can't do it.
Superintendent Brandon Hufnagel provided an update on fall elementary enrollment to the school district's board of directors during a special meeting Monday night.
He said the district has "over the last weeks been receiving many requests for building transfers at the elementary level," indicating that many of those requests have been placed for transfers from Russell to Sugar Grove. He said the district is "denying many of them based on enrollment numbers."
Hufnagel said most of the requests are for third, fourth and fifth grade at Sugar Grove. He explained that the levels in those classes are already high and additional students can't be accommodated without increasing class sizes.
As a result of a boundary slide, the line between Russell and Sugar Grove elementary schools, currently at Miller Hill Road, has been shifted approximately 3.5 miles west to Eccles Road.
The slide will result in a 25 to 30 percent reduction in the number of students at Sugar Grove Elementary.
The move is designed to reduce class sizes and overall cost, in part through corresponding staff cuts.
Hufnagel originally outlined a plan in January that would move all K-2 students to either Sugar Grove or Russell elementary schools with students in grades 3-5 going to the other building. Given the distances involved, the slide proposal was formulated.
Throughout the district, Hufnagel told the board on Monday, there are several places where class sizes were higher than preferred but that most are in line with a class size number the district is comfortable with.
But some flexibility still exists.
Hufnagel said that there are 24 registered kindergarten students at Allegheny Valley Elementary School in Clarendon and there are slated to be two kindergarten teachers there. While admitting that the numbers change daily, Hufnagel indicated that if the numbers stay the same one of those teachers could be moved to another school in the district , to lower class sizes somewhere else, and potentially replaced at AVES by an additional classroom aide.