Jones Pupils Going To Seven Schools

Jones Pupils Going To Seven Schools

By Susan McCabe 

The school board will act next week on a recommendation that the Jones School district be divided into seven sections to be assigned or annexed to other elementary schools.

The schools suggested to receive Jones School students were Bach, Angell, Allen, Dicken, Lakewood, Pattengill and Pittsfield.

The recommendations were contained in a report to the board last night from a committee of elementary principals, headed by Emerson Powrie, principal of Wines. Other suggestions included in the report are as follows:

Portions of the Jones district adjacent to the Bach and Angell boundaries would be annexed to those schools. The 11 children then added to Angell and the 15 going to Bach would be considered regularly assigned students and would provide their own transportation.

The boundaries of the area to be added to Angell would be from the intersection of Forest Ave. and N. University west on N. University to S. State St., north on S. State St. to E. Huron, east on E. Huron to Ingalls, and north on Ingalls to a line beyond E. Catherine, east to the back lot line of homes on Glenn Ave. and north to the Huron River.

The proposed boundary for the area to be added to Bach would be from the intersection of the Ann Arbor Railroad and W. Huron St., north along the railroad to the point Kingsley, extended, then east on Kingsley to N. Main St. and then south to the intersection of Main and Huron.

The boundaries of the other five sections have not been completed, but they will be ready for board action next week, Powrie said today.

The school system would provide bus transportation for the Jones students assigned to the five other schools. The staff would try to enlist and coordinate volunteer help in providing transportation to individual students so that they would be free to participate in after-school activities.

The children will be sent to receiving schools in groups of about 30. This figure is based on current school population in the Jones district, but Powrie said that because many homes the area are owned by developers of commercial property the number of school children is declining.

Between the time the committee began drawing section lines and last night, the number of children in the area which would be annexed to Angell dropped from 27 to 11, he said.

After 1965 the students from the present Jones attendance would attend the junior high school which serves the elementary district to which they are assigned.

This would serve the double purpose of allowing Jones students to remain with their elementary school friends and equalizing the racial balance as planned.

Research, evaluation, and the junior highs, Powrie ex- (missing text)

(missing text) compilation of records should form an essential part of the project, the report recommended. The results of the reassignment should be known in much detail as possible to in future decisions, the board added.

Powrie was asked by board President N. Edd Miller to comment on the recent proposal by the Mack School Parent-Teacher Organization that 128 Mack students be added to the Jones district and included in the reassignment project.

The committee has not met since the proposal was made but the original citizens committee which studied racial imbalance in the city’s schools did recommend that the board postpone action on Mack until the effectiveness of the Jones project could be evaluated.

Adding 128 students to the 170 already at Jones would make the present reassignment proposal almost impossible Powrie said. “Double shifting” between schools would be necessary to provide racial balance and adequate classroom space for the larger number of children, he added.

The report indicated that the committee eliminated Mack and Northside for reassignment of Jones students because of their already high Negro enrollment.

Dixboro, Carpenter, and Meadowviewer were eliminated because of their distance from
Jones and their small size with Burns Park, Abbott, Haisley, Eberwhite, and Wines out of the picture because they already have large enrollments.

Angell and Bach were included because of their nearness to Jones, and the other five schools were suggested because of their class sizes, total enrollment and rooms.

Lawton, Mitchell, Stone, Thurston and Bader are considered reserve receiver schools if changes are necessary.

The recommendations were based on committee meetings with Jones Principal Robert Stevenson, Supt. Jack Elzay, community resource people experienced with the problems of Negroes and youth, and surveys by elementary principals throughout the system to determine their potential enrollments for the next two or three years.

The committee has been meeting since it was appointed by the board in the fall.

Some of their recommendations relating to additional counseling, testing, library and n hour services for receiver schools will be brought up again in the report of the committee studying pupil-personnel services.

Board members asked i questions, but made no comments on the recommendations, which will be on next week’s agenda as an action item.