School Boundary Forums In January | Video

Kristin Clouston | 1/1/2013

You can let the Bismarck school board know where you`d like the new school boundaries set. The district is in the process of building two new elementary and a new high school, with the with completion dates of winter 2014, fall 2014 and fall 2015.

Next fall, schools are going to be reconfigured from K-6 to K-5, from 7-9 to 6-8, and from 10-12 to 9-12. The reconfiguration was planned for 2015 but needed to be moved up because of high enrollment numbers.

Superintendent Tamara Uselman said, "Our board did a superb job of working with the demographers number of 250 more new students every year and when the demographer came out with that, we had a lot of Doubting Thomases that said, `That`s not true. You`re overreacting Mrs. Uselman. I don`t think your numbers are accurate but the board really held on to that because it was a conservative number and it proves it was a conservative number.` The demographer came back six months later, looked at the growth and actually what we`re seeing in Bismarck, for a mid-point conservative, I think you better plan for 340 more students."

There are going to be two public forums that will address proposed boundary changes. The first meeting is Thursday, January 10 at 6:30 in the Wachter cafetorium. The second meeting is Thursday, January 24 at 6:30 in the Horizon cafetorium.

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