AUBURN - Bob Dello Stritto has yet to tell his son Jordan that, come September, he will be starting at a new elementary school.

No, the Dello Strittos are not leaving their Sherman Street home in Auburn. It turns out that Herman Avenue Elementary School, the school at which Jordan is currently attending second grade, is leaving them.

Jordan is one of about 150 students affected by a decision made by the Auburn Enlarged City School District Board of Education last week to reconfigure the existing boundaries that separate the elementary schools in order to balance out inequities in enrollment.

Over 450 students are enrolled at Herman Avenue Elementary for this academic year, while neighboring Owasco Elementary has 108 less students, according to enrollment numbers from the state Education Department's Basic Educational Data System report.

To even out enrollment numbers, the board finalized a plan to add several streets and avenues to the existing borders of each school, subtracting students from the total enrollment at Herman and Genesee Street Elementary School - which, as physically the smallest of the five district elementary schools, is also overcrowded - and adding them to Casey Park, William H. Seward and Owasco Elementary Schools.

What does that mean for Jordan?

He will be starting the third-grade at Owasco Elementary.

“It's disheartening when it comes to his friends,” Dello Stritto said. He believes that second-grade is the year children make potentially life-long friends and third grade is already a difficult and stressful transition year.

“But sometimes change is good,” he added.

This change came about after two years of deliberations, multiple run-throughs and district Superintendent Joseph D. “J.D.” Pabis physically driving the boundaries.

Pabis said the district began seeing a shift in community patterns several years ago when contractors began building new housing communities inside Owasco Elementary School territory initially expected to attract first-time buyers. Contrary to expectations, the development became home to people who were less likely to have young children.

Instead, Genesee Street Elementary began cultivating the growth expected for its elementary school counterpart. Pabis attributed this trend to the number of homes turning over and the availability of apartments, popular housing among young families.

With the retirement of Superintendent John Plume last year, Pabis said the district postponed further deliberations with the intention of resuming and generating plans to be enacted for the 2008-09 academic year.

Last fall there was a sense of urgency to revisit the concept after a number of students living north of the Arterial near the Auburn Correctional Facility attending Genesee Street Elementary were no longer eligible for busing and had to cross the busy artery as they lived under one mile from the school. While the district issued walk-back passes and placed all of those students back on a bus within a month, the board directed Pabis to look at reconfiguring the school boundaries to ensure students' safety.

Class size was also a big component in deliberations. Schools like Genesee Street and Herman Avenue have as much as 25 students to a classroom while other schools have at least 10 less students per classroom and have the physical space to absorb more.

With that in mind, Pabis first set his eyes on correcting the imbalance in Genesee Street Elementary. The school located in the heart of Auburn will become a community school, accepting walking students who live no further than three-quarters of a mile away from the school.

Students that had to walk across the Arterial will be starting the next academic year at Casey Park Elementary School.

By doing that, Casey Park became overcrowded, Pabis said, and some students had to be relocated to other elementary schools.

From there, it became necessary to look at all of the elementary schools and balance student population so each school provides equal learning opportunities.

Placement of students was determined to provide “maximum utilization of facilities and resources,” Pabis said, which includes class size, staff, transportation and the physical capacities of each building.

“I'm looking at what's best for students,” Pabis said, “and if I have a classroom of 25 students, on average, in one building and in another building 16, is that fair to the students when we are trying to provide equity of education?

“In my opinion, this is the least disruptive to parents and students,” he said, pointing to a configuration in which each elementary school building is designated for a limited number of grades. For example, the district could have elected Herman Avenue Elementary School to serve as the kindergarten through first grade building, Genesee Street as the second to third grade building, and so on.

“This we believe - and I strongly believe - continues with the integrity of an area elementary school, just allows students to still have a good class size and also looking at safety,” he said.

The same curriculum is used across elementary schools so there will be no inequity in the material learned.

Faculty members may also be reassigned make sure they are used efficiently.

“We understand that, while it is difficult to leave those we work with, our primary responsibility is to work with the children,” Auburn Teachers Association President Sally Jo Widmer said. “We go where we are needed.”

Widmer said the changes made by the district is only gong to benefit students and she therefore completely agrees with it.

“Because we're dealing with class size issues - the literature all supports smaller class size in the most needy schools which will improve our test scores - we would endorse this plan,” she said.

In addition to academics, she said small class sizes will also give students better opportunities to explore the arts, music, physical education as well as technology.

Parents with children who will be entering the fifth grade next September have the option to stay at the original school for the final year. However, younger siblings do not have an option, and will be relocated at the start of the next academic year.

During a public hearing held on March 19, affected families asked questions and voiced concerns over the reconfiguration.

Cynthia Sharp, whose 6-year-old son Corey Bacon will be relocated from Owasco Elementary to William H. Seward Elementary, asked Pabis if socio-economic standing was factored into the placement of students.

“It sounds more like a shuffle of kids and I can't help but wonder if it's more than simply over population,” she said.

Pabis made clear that socio-economics played no part of the deliberations. He used only a scattergram of student concentrations and Edulog, computer software that calculates distances of neighborhoods from district schools, to redefine the school boundaries. Names and other individual characteristics were not involved in the process.

“We're not looking at the socio-economics of parents or children,” he said. “We are trying to level the playing field.”

Even after attending the public hearing Sharp has reservations on the transfer.

“I still obviously don't want to move him,” she said. “I just feel like I'd rather for him to stay where he is, where he's building relationships with people, teachers and everyone in that school.”

She has been talking to Corey these last few weeks about the move and said that, while he's sad to be leaving Owasco and the friends he has made, he's taking the news well.

“Speaking on 6-year-old terms, he will do well,” she said.

But she also noted that not every child is that resilient and may have a difficult transition.

In the end, Pabis said this plan is only about the best interests of students.

“Hopefully everyone realizes there is no selfish motivation for this by the district,” he said. “This is not to save costs or cut corners. This is to be fair and equitable to all students, and that's the reason this was looked at, along with the safety aspect.”

Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net