By: Sharon Aron Baron
It has been two weeks since School Board Member Abby Freedman assured residents, after she asked them repeatedly to raise their hands at a community meeting, that she would take down her controversial boundary proposals.
But, she was just throwing them a bone.
Freedman couldn’t bear to withdraw all of her “C” proposals leaving just the “S” proposals that were written by the professional demographers at Broward County Schools up. See Boundary Proposals
Freedman broke her word and kept boundary proposal C9 up.
“Proposal C9 ignores everything in the boundary process and policy that is supposed to be followed. As proposed, it looks like S3, but with an “automatic trigger” that at some point, in the future, in the event that schools within the City of Parkland become overenrolled, students in the wedge, and only the wedge, move to whatever schools are nearest that are below capacity,” said Coral Springs resident Nathaniel Klitsberg who is building a home in Parkland.
Residents from who have purchased homes in the newly developed “wedge” area are concerned that Freedman is singling out their area by breaking them from the rest of Parkland and bussing them to other communities to meet class size requirements.
Freedman, who was elected in 2012 and represents Tamarac as well as Coral Springs and Parkland, doesn’t have a background in statistics or demography. She based her boundary proposals on counting the number of new bedrooms in developments being built. At the school board workshop meeting on October 22, Freedman got an earful from other board members, both in submitting a map, and then being able to modify it.
Her critics are blasting the proposal in the public comments section of her C9 proposal. Hollywood resident Robin Frydman, who is building a home in the new development of MiraLago in Parkland wrote, “At the Izone meeting, Abby Freedman said she will listen to the community. The community clearly told her that they would not accept her maps that busses children out of the neighborhood. Amended C9 still busses the children of the Wedge out of the neighborhood. Moreover, it is a conflict of interest for a board member to propose maps.”
Klitsberg believes that the boundary process is intended to create stability, not uncertainty, and said that C9 ignores this by not identifying what schools students from the Wedge will attend in the event there is overcrowding.
“If C9 were to have been proposed by a regular member of the community, it would have been ignored as amateurish at best, and more likely as ridiculous,” said Klitsberg.
“It should be treated the same way, even though Abby Freedman proposed it. It is absurd at best, and frankly, offensive in its intent.”
The School Board will vote on the proposals in February.