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Oct 27, 2009 11:01 pm US/Eastern
Cooper City Parents Protest School Boundaries
COOPER CITY (CBS4) ―
Felicia Anderson set the tone for a rally of Cooper City parents who oppose a proposed school boundary change in their city.
"You don't mess with our children and you don't take them out of their neighborhood schools," Anderson said.
Parents are furious that the school district is proposing to move hundreds of Pioneer Middle School students. The school district is considering two options: either send the students to Pines Middle School in Pembroke Pines or Driftwood Middle School in Hollywood.
According to the school district, Pioneer has 300 more students than it can handle and the other schools are under enrolled. A school district spokesperson said the boundary review is part of an ongoing, annual process.
Hundreds of parents gathered at Cooper City High School to sign petitions, brainstorm ideas and plan ways to fight the proposal.
"I moved to Cooper City for the Cooper City schools and they're renowned for being the best in Broward County," said parent David Nall, whose son and daughter could be affected by the boundary change proposal. "I literally live right across the street from (Pioneer Middle) and my son can literally walk to Pioneer Middle and now they want to bus him 4-5 miles away. That's not right."
Parents want the school district to consider other options, such as recalculating how they determine overcrowding. Parents said under the current rules, students in portable classrooms are considered part of the excess population. They want that rule to change since the economic downturn is preventing most school construction and portables are a necessity.
Parents also say it's unfair to ship students from the largely populated western communities of Broward County to schools in the eastern portion of the county.
"If we all wanted to live east we would have lived east," said parent Amy Churnetski. "It doesn't make sense to move our children east and have a domino effect, having all these kids going east to have all these children disrupted."
Some also complained about parents who fudge their residency in order to get their children into better schools, like the ones in Cooper City.
"I guarantee you that there's a lot of parents that are lying," said one parent. "We need to tighten the standards."
Several elected leaders showed up to support the parents in their fight.
Cooper City Mayor Debby Eisinger said the city commission voted unanimously Tuesday evening to oppose the proposed school boundary change. State representatives Evan Jenne and Martin Kiar told residents they plan to introduce legislation next session in Tallahassee to halt school boundary changes like the one being proposed.
The next step in the process is for the school district to hold community conferences. Two are scheduled: November 4th at 10 am at McArthur High School, and November 19th at 7 pm, also at McArthur High School.
To see the school district breakdown on the proposed boundary changes, click here
http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/schoolboundaries/discussions.shtml 
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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