Poughkeepsie City School District officials Wednesday night will present to the Board of Education a revised plan to realign its elementary buildings that includes transportation for any student who lives more than a half-mile from their school.

The plan was formed in response to families’ concerns regarding the safety of students walking to school and was enabled by the district working with partner organizations to receive “Child Safety Zone” designations, making it eligible for state aid.

The transportation service, offered to all qualifying students up to the fifth grade, would not only ease safety concerns but is also expected to increase attendance rates and decrease late arrivals. State aid would account for 81.5% of the cost, with fund balance covering the rest without impacting taxpayers.

Should the board move forward with the reconfiguration plan, residents will be asked to approve the use of buses in a resolution during a special vote expected to be held in January.

A livestream of the 6:30 p.m. meeting and the full agenda, including the Elementary Schools Reconfiguration presentation, are available through the board’s BoardDocs page.

The district has been exploring realigning its five elementary schools since fall 2023 with the purpose of strengthening the academic, social and emotional development of its youngest learners.

With four elementary buildings (Morse, Krieger, Warring and Clinton) serving grades 1-5 and one (the Early Learning Center at Smith School) serving pre-K and kindergarten learners – in addition to many pre-K students who attend partner organizations – students attend two or three different school buildings in their first three years of education.

The district has discussed realigning so that two schools – Morse and Krieger – house pre-K to second grade students, and three – Smith, Warring and Clinton – serve grades three through five. The dual language programs would be located at Krieger and Warring.

The changes would allow for increased emotional stability, greater curricular alignment and for the development of better age- and grade-appropriate support systems within each building. It could also encourage stronger student-teacher relationships and, ultimately, higher student achievement.

“It is critical that we create a learning environment for our early learners that builds a foundation of proficient literacy and numeracy,” Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education Gregory Mott said.

Transportation has been the lingering concern among families and parents who were surveyed or attended engagement sessions last school year, as well as the Reconfiguration Task Force itself. That prompted a renewed effort to seek bussing solutions that would not impact taxpayers.

The district recently partnered with Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES to determine what areas of the city could be designated Child Safety Zones, in which the district would be eligible to receive state aid. The zones are areas deemed unsafe for walking to school for a variety of reasons, be it a lack of sidewalks, unsafe road widths, volume or speed of traffic, density of population, or others.

In all, while the project is expected to cost $2 million, state aid is expected to cover $1.63 million.

Poughkeepsie and Franklin-Essex-Hamilton are also working with BusRight to evaluate demographic data and create bus routes – the goal is to complete them by Nov. 20 and test the routes in December – and hold driver training sessions. With voter approval, the district would contract out to a bus company to obtain the vehicles.

Officials are working toward presenting the board with a final reconfiguration plan that includes detailed logistics for how boundaries would work, with the goal of receiving approvals and submitting paperwork to the state Education Department before its March 1 deadline.