Siblings of enrolled students to be given priority in transfers

The Madison County Board of Education (BOE) approved a policy May 11 that allows it to prioritize transfer requests, giving top priority to students with older siblings at a school.

In fact, school leaders have included all sibling transfer requests in next year’s class size projections.

The BOE took action after hearing last month from parents who had transferred their older children from their original school zone. They feared that their younger children wouldn’t be able to join their older siblings when they started school due to space constraints.

Madison County Schools — and every other system in the state — originally couldn’t prioritize transfers under the state’s new transfer law, meaning it had to grant all transfers or none. Space is limited at schools due to class size restrictions.

But recent interpretations of the transfer law have allowed systems to determine priority, thus allowing Madison County leniency in sibling cases.

With these sibling transfer requests now met, the school system has closed non-sibling transfer requests — for now — for several grade levels at the five elementary schools.

The BOE, however, will revisit the issue July 20, when it could potentially grant all remaining transfer requests depending on enrollment figures over the summer.

The exception may be Colbert, which is close to maximum class size capacity in kindergarten.