The Union Public School District Board approved an agreement concerning transfers from the Newton County School District at their regular meeting on Monday.
The agreement allows all transfer students to continue attending UPSD schools for the 2017-18 school year. The agreement also states that the NCSD will grant transfers to graduating seniors along with their siblings for 2018, 2019 and 2020. After the 2020 school year, no siblings will be allowed to transfer. All employees’ children will be granted transfers as allowed by law.
After its March 9 meeting, the NCSD sent out letters to parents of students in Newton County who had been attending schools in Union, Lake and Sebastopol stating that the NCSD would not grant transfers for the upcoming school year unless they fell within a legally recognized exception. The change was estimated to impact more than 100 of students who live near Union, Lake and Sebastopol but technically still reside within the Newton County School District map.
The agreement is different from the one that was offered to and approved by the Scott County School District by the NCSD board last month.
That agreement stated that all children receiving transfers shall be allowed to attend school in Sebastopol and Lake for the 2017-2018 academic year. The children transferred from the Newton County School District to the Scott County School District who are enrolled in the graduating classes of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 would be allowed to graduate from the school in the transferee school district as long as their resident address does not change.
Further, the brother(s) and sister(s) of said children may also, in the discretion of the parents, continue attending the transferee school until such time as the 2018-2021 sibling graduates.
NCSD board said that one reason the agreements were different was because SCSD participates in the Newton County Alternative School and UPSD does not.
UPSD parent Nicole Bailey, who was one of three parents who attended the meeting, said she was disappointed that the UPSD parents didn’t receive the same offer from the NCDS board that Lake and Sebastopol parents received.
“I don’t want your second best, I want the same thing for my kids that you’re offering to everybody else, because I feel like they deserve it,” Bailey said. “If you can do it for one, you can offer it for everybody. There shouldn’t be any leniency on anyone for any school district for whatever reason. It should be the same across the board for everyone.”
UPSD Board President David LeBlanc said if they rejected the agreement then all of the students affected by the policy change would have to attend Newton County Schools at the start of the school year in August.
“The odds of their board calling a meeting before their scheduled August board meeting would be, I would think, slim to none, so all these families that would be affected would rescind back to the Newton County School District,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said that the agreement would at least it give affected parents a year to decide their next course of action.
