School no longer accepting SOC students after exceeding program capacity

By Bailey Gannett and Olivia Jones

For the 2014-2015 school year, Fossil Ridge High School is dealing with the fact that student enrollment exceeds the established program capacity. The process of accepting incoming freshmen has been modified to insure that FRHS will not continue to exceed the program capacity in future years.

“1,964 is the designed building program capacity. This is how many students the school was originally designed to hold,” FRHS principal Will Allen said. “With the incoming neighborhood freshmen accepted we’re at 2,010, [but] we’re above where we designed to be. That’s why we can’t take any school of choice students at this time.”

This means that School of Choice (SOC) students applying to FRHS who are not in the school’s boundaries will be put on a waiting list.

“If you live in the neighborhood it’s a given, and if you have been attending as a student who has been accepted to School of Choice, you will continue until you graduate,” Allen said. “Students who are currently attending School of Choice can graduate with their peers and have a great high school experience honored as a Saber Cat. But I can’t accept all those who want to Choice in.”

There has been some confusion; however, as to whether there will be absolutely no SOC students accepted for the 2014-2015 school year. “We have not accepted any School of Choice kids at all,” Allen said in an interview on Feb. 19.  Still, there have been cases of out of boundaries parents either lying about having an address within boundaries, and a few parents have even said their SOC students were accepted. There was even one reported case of a student living outside of Poudre School District boundaries being accepted into FRHS, as told to Etched In Stone. We cannot verify the authenticity of these claims.

“Unfortunately some things have happened in the past weeks. We have had some families submitting residency that was not factual,” Allen said. “We investigated further and they were not living where they said they were living. As a result, we notified those parents and said that their son or daughter is not going to be attending Fossil in the fall.”

Although some of these students have been denied after reports of a falsified address or complaints from other parents, some parents still claim that a couple of Choice students will be attending FRHS next year.  Again, we cannot verify the authenticity of these claims. FRHS only verifies and does background checks on students’ addresses if they are reported that it is a false address.

According to Allen, “Fossil Ridge is working with district leadership to determine how to verify the authenticity of all incoming neighborhood freshmen’s reported residency information.”

In an e-mail to EIS reporters, Allen wrote, “Because we are not accepting any SOC students, we will not check addresses for those students on the SOC waiting list. We don’t have the staff available to verify SOC student’s residency information and it is unnecessary because we are not accepting them into our school at this time.”

Still, a Poudre School District document on Choice/open enrollment says that “Each principal is responsible for checking student enrollment records at his or her school to establish that every student is a resident of the school’s neighborhood attendance area or has approved authorization for Choice/open enrollment transfer.”

Therefore, with alleged cases of Choice kids being accepted, regardless of whether or not they had a falsified address, their backgrounds should have been checked. Mr. Allen said that he is working with district leadership to determine how to best verify residency information for accepted neighborhood freshmen.

Last October, Allen told The Coloradoan that, “[FRHS] was closed to Choice.” However, he amended that and later told them that he ‘misspoke’ and encouraged those interested to apply.

As of Feb. 12, Allen has said that acceptance of students from the SOC waiting list is closed. “We are never closed to SOC applications. However, an application does not guarantee automatic acceptance into Fossil Ridge. Depending upon enrollment and where we are in relation to our program capacity, we will determine if we are able to accept students off of the waiting list.”

Incoming SOC students will not necessarily be accepted to FRHS, and will need to find an alternate high school. “My first encouragement is for them to register to attend their neighborhood school,” Allen said. “This will give them the best opportunity to enroll in those courses they desire at their neighborhood high school.”

According to a Coloradoan article from Oct. 9 2013, “Since 2011, Fort Collins’ population grew from about 146,000 to 151,000. City projections are that it will increase by roughly two percent — or 3,020 people — annually for the next several years.” This means that, unless a new school is built, Fort Collins’ schools will need to work out enrollment issues.  Poudre School District owns land near Lemay Avenue that could potentially be used to build a new high school. However, according to Allen that process of establishing and building a new high school would take “ten years if we started now.”

In the meantime, SOC applicants must check the box next to the school they wish to attend (on the PSD application). This screen shot (insert picture) shows FRHS as the second option for a SOC application, though the school is not accepting students from the SOC waiting list. Students who do not live within the boundary of FRHS are not immediately accepted, and then are placed on a waiting list. According to this document which can be found on the PSD website, “Choice/open enrollment applicants who have submitted applications before the first consideration deadline and who are notified that space is not available in the grade level of the Choice school or program to which they have applied shall be placed on an In-District waiting list or Out-of-District waiting list, depending on the location of their residence, in accordance with their previously determined order of priority under the determining availability of space section above. In-District and Out-of-District waiting lists shall be continually adjusted to ensure that the student thereon are in the order of priority specified under the determining availability of space section above. When making such adjustments the order of students within each priority level shall be determined by their length of time on the waiting list.”

However, according to Allen the waiting list and a student’s position and placement on this waiting list is randomly determined by district software. “Let’s say I have 24 people that are category three. But just because I turn my application earlier versus later doesn’t put me up higher on that list,” he said.  “All 24 people are shuffled and given a random position on the waiting list. It doesn’t necessarily help you to turn in your application sooner or later as long as you turn it in before the SOC deadline. It’s randomly generated by a computer.”

FRHS registrar Sandra Emanuel agreed that the process is random. “You fall in a certain category based on where you live or if you have parents here or a sibling here, but within each category it’s random,” she said. “Each priority with a higher number would come before those with a lower number.”

Based on the PSD document, first priority goes to “students who reside within the attendance area of the neighborhood school they wish to attend.” Second priority goes to “students currently enrolled in the school and students who wish to continue attending a program that spans different grade levels and schools.” Third priority goes to “new student’s applicants who reside within the district who are siblings of a student that is currently enrolled in the school and will be attending at the same time as the applicant, and who live at the same residence as the currently enrolled student.”  Fourth priority goes to “new student applicants who reside within the district and whose parent/guardian is employed at the school.”

According to Allen, FRHS is estimated to have about 2,009 students during the 2014-2015 school year. The maximum program capacity for the campus is 1,964 students. “With the amount of recent construction in our attendance neighborhood, most likely we are going to be at 2,020 or even higher for the next several years,” Allen said. “But our enrollment is going to be comprised of neighborhood kids until we are operating within our established program capacity.”

For more information, see The Coloradoan’s article here.

Editor’s Note: This article subject to prior review by school administration.