MPS Intermediate, Middle Schools to see boundary realignment

By Jacob Sturm
[email protected]

Mustang students in Intermediate and Middle Schools throughout the district may be realigned
ahead of the 2025-26 school year.

The Mustang Board of Education discussed the possibility as a way to prevent schools from
getting overcrowded based on the projected growth the district is seeing. Mustang is set to add
Elementary No. 9 to address the Elementary side of the growth starting next school year.

Charles Bradley, the Mustang Superintendent, touched on the potential realignment for the
Intermediate and Middle Schools at the meeting.

“When we are looking at these things of what guides us, whenever possible we want to make
sure we are keeping housing additions intact to preserve neighborhood connections,” Bradley
said.

He said a huge piece when looking to accomplish boundary realignment is transportation, and
that their plans prioritize student safety with goals of maintaining bus rides to under 20-
minutes.

Bradley said some rural routes go over that number, and that MPS is closely monitoring those
situations.

“Each boundary realignment is unique,” Bradley said. “You cannot cookie-cutter these events
because we can’t control where people live, where people move to and just the rate of growth.
So, we have to take all of these factors into consideration and try to control what we can, which
is what are the class sizes in our buildings as we try and grow, and we also want to make sure
that we will not have to redo this every single year.”

Rough drafts for the realignment were presented to board members during the Jan. 13
meeting, where current enrollment numbers were discussed.

MPS found issues in funneling three elementary schools into an intermediate due to more
schools being in the same boundary of the potential realignment than needed.

The goal of some of the potential boundaries is to also reduce Canyon Ridge Intermediate’s size
due to new housing additions possibly coming into areas in that boundary likely bringing more
students into the district.

The BOE also approved the new elementary boundary realignment for the 2025-26 school year.
Board members also heard from parents voicing concerns about the redistricting during the
public comments portion of the agenda before the decision.

Elementary realignment was discussed during the Board of Education meeting in December,
too.