OAK PARK : Parents Object to School Redistricting

Barbara Buckley lives across the street from her daughter’s elementary school, so close she can hear the principal’s daily announcements over the public address system.

Buckley’s house, in fact, is the nearest home to Oak Hills Elementary School in Oak Park. So, she said, she can’t believe that the board of the Oak Park Unified School District plans to move her daughter from Oak Hills to Red Oaks Elementary School, which will open in September more than three blocks away.

Last week, Buckley and some of her neighbors from a cul-de-sac on Evanwood Avenue pleaded with the board to let their children stay at Oak Hills. “The proximity to Oak Hills means a great deal to us,” Buckley said. “That’s why we moved there.” She said she doesn’t question the quality of education at Red Oaks Elementary.

But board president Wayne Blasman emphasized that the new plan would only require students from Evanwood Avenue to go a short distance father than they go now. “We’re only asking you to walk three blocks,” he said.

Neighbor Dave Sobieraj, who moved to Oak Park in August from Connecticut, said he deliberately chose a house he thought was in the Oak Hills school area. The school recently won a Blue Ribbon award for excellence from the U.S. Department of Education.

Board members said they had no desire to reopen the issue of school district boundaries that was thrashed out in bitter public hearings last year. Red Oaks will be the district’s third elementary school.

The board said residents will be allowed to file applications for exceptions to the boundaries that will be reviewed case-by-case.

“This was probably the toughest decision this board had to make,” Blasman said. “Give this board and this staff a chance because we are not going to revisit this issue, because it was very painful.”

Buckley said the distance will mean the difference between letting her daughter walk to school under her watchful eye and having to drive her.