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Redrawing boundaries has more hurdles than a track meet and all the emotional charge that often comes with parents wanting the best for their children. A CIO shares how his district got a leg up on both.

Redrawing the school boundaries of a district sounds like it should be relatively simple: Just divvy up your students and send them to the nearest school. In practice, though, there’s an array of competing goals, from making efficient use of school facilities to creating socioeconomic balance and ensuring racial equality across each building. If you redraw boundaries frequently, some families feel that they’re always the ones asked to sacrifice for the good of the district.

At Muskogee Public Schools, we recently redrew our boundaries. We found what was key in deciding where to put the new boundaries and, more important, getting the district community on board with the plan, was solid, well presented data. People could see the need for change and that we had created a reasonable solution, which helped manage emotional reactions to change.

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