The Washoe County School District's Zoning Advisory Committee held a meeting today discussing possible changes that could affect over a hundred students in north Reno.

The school district's Chief Operations Officer says the proposal is to rezone the entire north Reno area from Hug High School to McQueen High.

Hug High is currently dealing with a student population that is over capacity, so if these changes were made, that population would decrease, leaving them still slightly over capacity. It would leave McQueen right at its maximum base capacity for the next school year.

Adam Searcy, WCSD Chief Operations Officer, says, "This really isn't so much of an overcrowding situation as it is a misalignment that we wanted to correct. There are mild overcrowding at the current Hug High School, there's a little more capacity at the McQueen High School. These are temporary enrollment imbalances, this more about a long-term alignment between where these kids go to school in middle school and where they go to high school and keeping them together rather than splitting them apart."

The current zone has Clayton Middle School allowing students to split off between three high schools: Hug, McQueen, and Reno High. Adjusting to the proposed new zones will allow just over one hundred of those students to move onto McQueen instead of Hug. This allows students more likely to stick together and not have to split up and affect their social lives.

Lots of public commenters, including the principal of McQueen High, were on board with the adjusted school zones and prepared a program to welcome their new students.

Freeman Holbrook, Principal of McQueen High School, says, "This is kind of a waiting game for us right now. We thought it was important though to get the team together and get a plan ready. We're well aware that with the time frame that's up there, when it's time to go we need to be ready, so we've done that right now. We feel very prepared to welcome them and once we get the word, we're ready like that."

The committee voted yes to this proposal 7-0. But no action will be taken just yet.

The approved proposal now heads to the Board of Trustees who have the final say in what happens next. The meeting is scheduled on April 20.Â