MILTON — Santa Rosa County parents will soon have another option for transferring students to another campus outside their zone.
House Bill 7029, which the Florida Senate passed and Gov. Rick Scott approved, presents a new option: controlled open enrollment, which takes effect during the 2017-18 school year.
Santa Rosa County School District Assistant Superintendent Bill Emerson said school officials are working on the policy based on area teachers, administrators and parents’ input. Still, it must comply with the Florida Department of Education.
“They passed the law but they gave us a year to have this ready,” he said. “Basically, the law says, if you want to go to another school in any other district in the state, that we have to a plan to make that possible.”
Currently, the SRC school district offers a reassignment process that prioritizes students who meet these criteria.
- Receive a court order
- A school district employee wants his or her child attend the same school, regardless of school zone
- The parent works for the school district, but lives outside the county
- Medical situations
- Military preference
- Allowing a student to finish his or her school year at the same school, even though they moved to another school zone
- Allowing a student to attend an academic program or extracurricular activity at another school if the school they attend doesn’t provide it
Outside these options, parents currently can write a letter to school officials explaining their situation, Emerson said. This option would change to controlled open enrollment.
“(For example, if a school) is 85 percent full, we are going to consider it closed to open enrollment,” Emerson said. “So let’s say its 85 percent, the school had 1,000 student stations — that means 850 is that magic number. So if we had 800 students, we would have 50 open enrollments. We would take all of the open enrollment requests for that school. If we had more than the 50, we would have a lottery to see who gets in the school.”
As for the open enrollment and lottery’s parameters, Emerson said it is too soon know all of the details.
“We will get some more guidance from the department of education based on the new law, and we will basically have this next school year to come up with a draft and get it approved for our open enrollment plan, which will become part of our choice plan,” he said.
The school district must have the plan ready and prepared by July 1, 2017, Emerson said.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Santa Rosa student transfer policy changes planned for 2017-18 school year