Freeland is at the bottom of Division 4 instead of the top of Division 5. Why? School of Choice?
The link below goes to the Michigan High School Athletic Association and shows how each School District is placed into their respective Divisions based on Demographics:
School of choice was forced upon the Freeland Community School District years ago where Freeland had to accept some school of choice students outside of the district or be threatened by a funding loss from the State. Freeland limited the amount of school of choice openings to incoming Kindergarten students only, but over the last 5-6 years, there have been approximately 100 school of choice students (across all grades) enrolled in our district. We average in a classroom around 24 children. The State of Michigan has since changed school of choice so that there is no threat of funding loss should a district choose not to accept students outside of the district.
If the district claims to be struggling for space, why would the district keep adding out of district children to the school system? The addition of these students does not benefit the taxpayer or the students if overcrowding is a reality. Your superintendent and board know the situation. If there truly is a space problem, there are only two reasons they would want to accept the amount of children out of the district that they have. Either for the money or they are trying to create a problem with overcrowding.
We have already graduated our largest class ever, our current largest class is around 175 students-10th grade. Our smallest class is 149 students– where 17 of them are school of choice. If we did not have the 17 students we would have only 132 children in Kindergarten. Comparing the largest class of 175 students to the kindergarten class without school of choice students the difference is 42 students. 42 students is roughly two full classrooms that would not be used. This would be opening up a tremendous amount of space. This example shows what we have been through and what we are doing to ourselves. If we have been able to sustain the largest class sizes already and we could manage the abuse of overcrowding through school of choice then we could reduce our need for expansion.
Please consider talking to the superintendent about how many children are currently enrolled in the district from school of choice.