The Washoe County School District held its first hearing on 3 rezoning plans on Thursday, where they talked about a number of schools in Reno and Sparks. The meeting was all about introducing parents to three plans rezoning plans as well as answering any questions they may have.
At Thursday’s public hearing of the Washoe County School District Zoning Committee, local parents had a number of concerns. The Washoe County School District says building new schools allows them to work toward a specific goal in their plans to rezone “ All the kids that go to one elementary school will go to one particular middle school and then one particular high school,” said WCSD Strategies Officer Paul LaMarca.
One of the plans introduced at the meeting, regarded changes coming to Sparks. “We are having significant changes to many of our elementary schools in Sparks and North Reno because of the building of Desert Skies as well as well as Sky Ranch Middle Schools,” said LaMarca.
Two other plans that were introduced involved redistricting to adjust to the new Marce Herz Middle School that is currently being built. “In terms of teacher allocation, that will be driven by the number of students. It won’t create any changes to nutrition. If anything we do expect some modest savings in relation to transportation,” said LaMarca.
Under the proposed plan, students from Pleasant Valley and Brown Elementary will be redistricted to Marce Herz Middle School.Pine Middle School will also be affected. The re-zoning if approved could re-determine where many of those students go to high school.“So those kids will move up all the way from elementary to high school together. And I like that,” said local resident Jenni Amundsen. “For some kids in elementary, middle and high school, it could effectively split them from their siblings. Not to 2 different middle schools but to 2 different high schools,” said local resident Theresa Ibarra.
Juniors and seniors in 2020 will not have to switch schools under these proposed rezoning plans. But it's still early in the planning process and school district officials told us they are planning to hold more meetings on this subject.
