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District 64: Education, not location, will determine school transfers
Updated: November 3, 2011 5:06PM
Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Superintendent Philip Bender will be stricter in approving internal district transfers in the future.
Bender said that there isn’t a change to the policy, but it will be followed more strictly. Families will only be granted an internal district transfer if a parent can prove an educational necessity for the move, he said.
The district’s policy for requesting in-district school transfers states, “A request should be directed to the Superintendent, who, at his or her sole discretion, may grant the request when the parent(s)/guardian(s) demonstrate that the student could be better accommodated at another school, provided space is available.”
Prior to the change made by the superintendent, some transfers to a different school within the district were reportedly based on the school being in a more convenient location, as opposed to an educational reason.
The superintendent recently denied 18 out of 50 transfer requests and parents had questioned Bender’s reasons for the denials. Bender ultimately decided to approve those requests.
Bender said that the siblings of those students will also be allowed to transfer to the schools that their older siblings transfer to.
Previously there was an optional attendance area just north of Touhy Avenue that gave students in the Carpenter Elementary School/Emerson Middle School area the option of attending Washington Elementary School or Lincoln Middle School if they chose to do so because the location was closer.
In 2008 that optional area was eliminated. Some of the 50 requests the superintendent recently received were from that area.
At previous School Board meetings some parents requested that the district provide more of a case-by-case evaluation of the transfers. This new change by the superintendent will reportedly provide such an evaluation.
“We want to make sure we make our buildings as balanced as we can,” said Bender.
