School board to draw boundaries tonight

Four months of dry demographic discussions and parents' tearful pleas come down to this tonight: Clear Creek's school board must make some hard decisions that will determine which school your kid goes to next year.
The interesting part of the board meeting on school boundaries begins at 7 p.m. in the usual place, CCISD's Education Support Center, 2425 E. Main St. in League City. Anyone who wants to speak but missed last Thursday's deadline for a 3-minute time slot can still show up at the meeting and claim a 1-minute slot by signing up before the meeting. Three people have already signed up to speak about school boundaries tonight.
According to the agenda packet for tonight's meeting, Clear Creek Superintendent Greg Smith is recommending that the board go along with the proposals of the School Boundary Advisory Committee, which made its pitch to the board a couple of weeks ago.
When the School Boundaries Advisory Committee began meeting last fall to draw the boundaries now before the board, observers might have thought the most contentious part would be tearing residents of Taylor Lake Village, El Lago and Seabrook away from top-rated Clear Lake High School and sending them farther away to Clear Falls High School when it opens in League City next fall.
And parents have indeed raised such objections. The board has also heard about unhappy students who live within walking distance of Clear Creek High School but who are supposed to board a bus bound for Clear Falls next year.
But some of the most vocal complaints have arisen over at Clear Springs High School, where the advisory committee is calling for high schoolers living in the neighborhoods that feed Parr Elementary to attend Clear Creek High School, as they did before Springs opened three years ago. Which has little to do with Clear Falls opening and more to do with how crowded Springs will become a few years down the road if nothing's done.
The committee is also recommending that students living in Whitcomb Elementary's zone all go to Clear Lake High School instead of some to Lake and some to Clear Brook High School as they do now. That too is an attempt to balance out high school enrollments to around 2,500 students each within four years.
Smith points out in a news release that the district's never moved kids around like this before:
We still have work to do on the boundary recommendation since this is the first time in CCISD's 60 year history that we have had to propose moving students from one existing high school to another existing high school. In the past, the boundary changes have solely been to populate a new school."
One decision the school board will have to make is what to do about kids who want to stay at the school they're currently attending. The board could grandfather incoming juniors and seniors as it has in the past or include sophomores as well. The board could also take the advisory committee's recommendation that sophomores' requests to stay put be handled on a case-by-case basis through school transfers.
Of course, the school board can vote to change some of the boundaries and policies being recommended, and in fact it doesn't have to take any of the advisory board's or superintendent's recommendations at all, however unlikely that might be.
Here's a rundown of what the School Boundary Advisory Committee is recommending:
CLEAR FALLS HIGH SCHOOL
Will take the portion of students from League City Intermediate who live in the Hyde Elementary zone in addition to all the students from Seabrook Intermediate and Bayside Intermediate. Bayside is the school that's opening next door to Falls in the Education Village next year, and it will be fed by Stewart and Mossman elementary schools.
Map for Clear Falls High School
CLEAR SPRINGS HIGH SCHOOL
Will lose students living in Parr Elementary's zone.
Map for Clear Springs High School
CLEAR BROOK HIGH SCHOOL
Will lose students living in Whitcomb Elementary's zone.
Map for Clear Brook High School
CLEAR LAKE HIGH SCHOOL
Will lose Seabrook Intermediate students but pick up the portion of Whitcomb students who don't already go there.
Map for Clear Lake High School
CLEAR CREEK HIGH SCHOOL
Will pick up students from Parr Elementary's zone and lose students living in the zones for three elementary schools: Hyde, Stewart and Mossman.
See boundary map for Clear Creek High School
INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS
Map for Bayside Intermediate
Map for League City Intermediate
Map for Victory Lakes Intermediate