Overview
- The school board voted Tuesday in a 5-2 decision to adopt a framework called Option C that ends the districtwide lottery and guarantees students a seat at a neighborhood elementary school.
- Under Option C families will still be able to apply only to campuses that host designated citywide programs such as language immersion, bilingual education, special education, and K–8 sites.
- Many parents protested the decision and district surveys showed stronger support for the less-restrictive Option B, with roughly 72% of nearly 3,000 respondents preferring Option B versus 48% favoring Option C.
- The board directed staff to work with demographers to redraw attendance boundaries, set tiebreaker rules for limited program seats, produce a strategic investment plan, hold more community sessions, and return with a final policy for an April 2027 vote and a fall 2028 rollout.
- District leaders point to more than 14,000 empty seats concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods as the reason for change but warn that equitably staffing and resourcing neighborhood schools could take five to ten years and may lead to proposals for school closures or mergers by 2030.