3 Possible Options Presented For School Redistricting In Fairfield

FAIRFIELD, CT — A trio of possible scenarios for redistricting have been presented for consideration to help address racial imbalances in Fairfield's public elementary schools.

The three options, deemed the "most viable" by consulting firm The SLAM Collaborative, were presented to the Board of Education this week, and can be viewed here. The SLAM Collaborative is a national multi-disciplinary design firm hired by the district to come up with various scenarios to help achieve racial balance in its schools.

While Fairfield is generally a diverse community, a couple of the elementary schools in the district, primarily McKinley and Holland Hill, have higher concentrations of minority students. The goal of the effort is to make all 11 of the town's public elementary schools more balanced racially.

As presented, the possible scenarios are as follows:

Repurpose Elementary School as a Pre-K Center

• Repurpose Jennings
• Repurpose Dwight

Non-contiguous attendance zones

Contiguous attendance zones

All three possible scenarios have pluses and minuses, though none of the three change the feeder programs into the district's middle or high schools. Officials expect to finalize a plan in the fall, and implement it in the 2024-25 school year.

"Thank you for this. Just a general observation," said board member Jeffrey Peterson during Tuesday's hearing. "There are things I like in each one of these, and things that frighten me in each one of these, and it's probably what I should have expected all along. So, it's going to be interesting going through this."

Under the first possible scenario, Jennings would become a districtwide pre-K center, and Jennings' K-5 students would move to McKinley and Burr schools.

The second possible scenario calls for small pockets of students to be moved to other schools to help achieve more racial balance.

In the third possible scenario, a larger percentage of students, perhaps as many as 15 percent, might be moved in a more traditional redistricting effort.

"I really need a couple of days to digest this, and I think the public does, too," said Vice Chair Nick Aysseh.

Tuesday's board meeting, which features the SLAM presentation, can be viewed here. The next meeting to include a discussion on redistricting is scheduled for June 27.

— Image via Fairfield Public Schools