Today, Harding High School and Prince Chapman Academy students will receive their new school assignments in the mail, but most won't be surprised. Because of the distribution of choices, the district will likely be able to send students to their first-choice schools, said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green.

Students at Harding and Prince Chapman, the middle school feeding into Harding, chose new schools for the rest of their high school years because the district will close the high school for two years while it develops a curriculum for the proposed college and career academy magnet program that will go there. Grades levels will be phased in, with the first class graduating in 2016.

Because of Harding's history of low performance, current students and staff must be removed from the building or risk consequences under the state's Public Law 221 and the federal No Child Left Behind.

Not one of the district's remaining four high schools could accommodate all the nearly 700 students from the Harding area, but Green said student and family choices fell as she predicted.

"I anticipated an even split," she said. "Students and families chose the schools that best met their needs, not necessarily the one that was closest. I was not surprised with the even distribution of the selection."

Next year's seniors were given priority, including their siblings, continuing on down grade levels, but Green said some sets of siblings chose to attend different schools.

The school that will accept the most new students, New Haven, is the closest and was the high school the district originally proposed all students attend. Leo, the farthest from Harding, will accept the fewest students. The district opened up the choice of any of its high schools after backlash from the community about its transition plan.

Continued dispute over the busing of students from the Harding area to other schools caused some parents not to make a choice. Green said a total of 546 forms were submitted. Harding's enrollment currently sits at about 675 students. Students who did not choose a new school will receive their assignments next week. Green said these assignments will be based solely on capacity.

At a parent meeting at Harding in December, Green said Harding-area students would be picked up by buses as they are currently and taken to Harding. Students would then ride shuttles to their new schools, preventing buses from different high school picking up students on the same street or in the same neighborhood. The district now has said it will look at bus routes to determine the most effective way to bus students to their new schools. The district will also run activity buses for sports and other activities.

Green said the district's next steps will be to develop transition teams at the four high schools that include students, teachers and parents. The district will continue its professional development, training teachers at the district's four other predominately white high schools to meet the needs of their new mostly minority students from the Harding area. Students are now in the process of selecting courses for next year, Green said.

The administration will continue to move forward with its current transition plan as a pastors group from the Harding area looks into turning the high school into a school board-sponsored charter. Green said the administration's only responsibility was to look into the legality of the move. To date, Green said it looks as though the school would be considered a conversion charter unless Harding closes. The school could be a non-conversion charter - the type board vice president and Harding-area representative the Rev. Stephen Terry proposed - only if Harding were not an existing school.

At the district's last board meeting Terry encouraged the board to consider appointing a management company to run the school, using a portion of the district's money, to keep the students in the community. Terry pushed for a non-conversion charter school, which could be board sponsored.

EACS high school capacity
Superintendent Karyle Green said the district shouldn't have any issues with capacity at any of its high schools. The capacity numbers are the most recent provided by the district, but Green said some schools can be reconfigured to accommodate more students.