The Raytown school board has unanimously approved a plan that would keep Raytown Central Middle School open, transfer Raytown Success Academy into that building and change school assignments for about 220 students.
Takeaways
- Raytown school district administration recommends a plan that keeps Raytown Central Middle School open and changes school assignments for about 220 students.
- The decision was based on public feedback, including a survey 78 people completed.
- The school board approved the plan during its Oct. 13 meeting.
The decision, made during the Oct. 13 board meeting, means the district is opting for the less disruptive of two possibilities that it floated to the public — one it called “option orange.”
The other choice, known as “option green,” would have closed Raytown Central Middle, moved sixth graders into elementary schools and affected more than 1,100 students.
Choosing the plan that disrupts fewer students is in line with the wishes of members of the public, said James Cooper of Cropper GIS, a consulting firm the district hired to help with enrollment forecasting and planning.
Only 78 people — in a district of more than 7,000 students — filled out a survey asking for opinions on the two options. But their preferences were clear and aligned with feedback from other channels, he said.
While “78 does seem like a minute number compared to the student enrollment in such a large district,” Cooper said, it “reemphasizes some of the discussions that the superintendent and some of the internal planning team members have been having.”
The district launched an effort to adjust and consolidate school assignments after a demographic study from Cropper GIS predicted enrollment will decrease by more than 5% over the next 10 years.
Carl Calcara, the district’s chief executive business officer, said that’s not a problem — if the district reacts appropriately.
“That is nothing to be alarmed about,” he said, “if we could reduce our financial footprint, if we can reduce our physical footprint and align ourselves over that same period of time to reduced student attendance.”
School assignment changes in Raytown schools
While the plan the district chose affects fewer students, some will still move to a new school.
Elementary school map
Raytown Success Academy, the district’s alternative school for students who struggled to succeed in a traditional classroom, will move into the Raytown Central Middle building. That would save the district money because it currently rents space for the academy from a church.
Middle school map
To make space for those students, about 60 Raytown Central Middle students would instead be sent to Raytown Middle School.
The district would also change boundaries for a few other schools, meaning some neighborhoods would be assigned to different schools than they are currently.
High school map
The changes, meant to adjust for how the number of children in certain areas has shifted, would affect about 100 elementary students and 65 high school students, specifically:
- 31 Fleetridge Elementary School students would instead be assigned to Laurel Hills Elementary School.
- 25 Southwood Elementary School students would instead be assigned to Spring Valley Elementary School.
- 41 Spring Valley Elementary School students would instead be assigned to Westridge Elementary School.
- 65 Raytown South High School students would instead be assigned to Raytown High School.
All of those numbers are based on 2024-25 enrollment and could be different by the time the plan goes into effect, as early as the 2026-27 school year.
Feeder patterns
The plan would also affect feeder patterns and influence what is known as a “split,” when students who start out at the same school and don’t change addresses are separated when they advance to middle or high school.
The district wants to minimize splits and make them as even as possible when they do happen, so there aren’t just a few students being separated from most of their classmates.
It tracks whether students who don’t move houses would attend the same middle school as all of their elementary classmates, attend the same high school as all of their middle school classmates or attend the same high school as all of their elementary classmates.
By that measure, there are five total splits currently. The new plan has four.
Blue Ridge Elementary students will face the only new split. Currently, they all move on to Raytown Central Middle. Under the new plan, about 40% will go to Raytown Middle School.
Blue Ridge students will also continue to be divided from their elementary classmates in high school, but the split will be more even. Currently, more than 80% attend Raytown South High. The new plan puts 42% in Raytown High and 58% in Raytown South High.
Two splits remain largely the same. Raytown Central Middle students will continue to be divided fairly evenly into the district’s two high schools. And Robinson Elementary students will continue to attend Raytown Central Middle together but then be divided unevenly for high school.
Some of the district’s most uneven splits will go away. Instead of sending just 3% of Raytown Middle School students to Raytown South, the district will place them all in Raytown High School. And all Eastwood Hills Elementary students will land in Raytown High School instead of a small percentage going to Raytown South High.
Public input and future plans
In designing the proposal, the district sought input from the public through community forums, a survey about the two plans that was open from Sept. 18 through Sept. 30 and a more general feedback form.
Chief communications officer Marissa Cleaver Wamble said about 50 people attended the in-person forum where the two plans were presented. Another 30 people attended online.
Cooper, the Cropper GIS employee, said that despite the 78-person sample size the survey results aligned with conversations at the forums and elsewhere and seemed attuned to the fact that one plan was more disruptive than the other.
When looking at the elementary and middle school elements of the plan that administrators ultimately recommended to the board, more than half of responders approved of them, less than 20% disapproved and the rest were undecided.
In contrast, less than 30% approved of the plan that involved closing a middle school and moving sixth graders to elementary schools. More than 60% disapproved.
“The last thing we want to do is disrupt our students in their journey in school, to disrupt the community,” Superintendent Penelope Martin-Knox said.
After the board voted to approve the plan, Martin-Knox said the district would communicate the decision to families and start working out some of the details.
For example, district leaders have indicated they’d be open to letting students who would have been in their last year at a school — such as eighth graders or high school seniors — to remain there even if the new boundaries place them in a different school.
“The work truly begins after we decide the direction we’re going to go in, because now the planning will begin,” Martin-Knox said. “I’m in support of this recommendation because it is the voice of our community. Whether it’s 78 or 7,800, it’s the voice.”
