School attendance zones put online

By JASON WERMERS
Item Staff Writer
jwermers@theitem.com

Just a couple of months ago, it became possible for anyone to easily see what school attendance zone a Sumter County property is in with a few clicks of a mouse.

Lamar Atkins, attendance director for Sumter School District 17, said his district's school attendance boundaries have been available on the county's Geographic Information System for about five years.

But attendance boundaries for both District 17 and Sumter School District 2 have received heightened interest in the past few months as a small group examines those lines, and recommends possible changes to them, as the two districts work toward merging on July 1, 2011.

When the panel began looking at those boundaries in April, it had to rely on large maps produced by the districts.

It wasn't long before District 2's school attendance zones were placed on the GIS, the culmination of about six months' worth of work involving Atkins, District 2 Superintendent Dr. J. Frank Baker and Bruce Haskins with the Sumter County Assessor's Office.

With both districts' boundaries available online, it is easy to zoom in on a neighborhood and see what school a property is zoned for. It's also easy to see neighborhoods, even houses, that are divided by the districts' boundaries.

For example, the FoxRidge subdivision off Wilson Hall Road has three homes in District 17 (Alice Drive Elementary and Middle and Sumter High schools), and the rest in District 2 (Cherryvale Elementary, Furman Middle and Lakewood High schools).

Atkins said when FoxRidge was being built, someone asked him which homes were in District 17's territory so that he could buy one of those.

Baker added that even though most of the rest of the subdivision is within his district, District 2 does not send a single bus there to pick up children.

"They go to private school," Baker said. "Those are $300,000 to $500,000 homes."

Neighborhoods like that could have their attendance boundaries change when the two districts consolidate.

Both Atkins and Baker plan to offer recommendations soon to the panel looking at those attendance lines. That panel, which is a subcommittee of the Sumter Consolidation Transition Committee, will then make its recommendations to the full committee.

Any plan that is decided on must then be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice because District 2 is under a court-ordered desegregation plan dating to 1969, and District 17 has a voluntary desegregation plan.

In the meantime, anyone can view the current attendance boundaries on the online GIS. Atkins said it's proved popular for military families who are being reassigned to Shaw Air Force Base to pick a place to live based on school attendance zones.

"They are using it more than any other people," Atkins said.