Parents get high-school orientation in Lower Merion

Parents of next year's ninth graders in the Lower Merion School District will get a peek at high school life tonight, even as some continue to oppose the school board's recent redistricting decision.

Among the eighth graders moving up to ninth grade are children who under the new plan will be bused from three neighborhoods to Harriton High School, though they could walk to Lower Merion High.

The plan was designed to equalize enrollment between the two schools, which is lopsided because more families live near Lower Merion High than Harriton.

Tonight's meeting, which begins at 7 at Lower Merion High on Montgomery Avenue in Ardmore, will be open to all parents of students entering ninth grade at Harriton or Lower Merion in the fall.

School officials said they would share information on what parents could expect regarding high-school facilities, activities, scheduling and course selection.

Responding to concerns raised during emotional public discussions of the redistricting plan, school officials have announced the formation of a focus group to be made up of parents, students and school personnel.

The group, which will start meeting in February, is supposed to explore providing services such as "(personalized orientation visits to Harriton, additional transportation opportunities for students and parents, guidance and teacher visits, peer matching, etc.) to meet the needs of incoming students," according to the district Web site.

The district also launched a new e-mail address, transitions@lmsd.org, to handle feedback.

The Lower Merion school board voted Jan. 12 to adopt the plan, in the face of objections from parents who said it split the communities of North Narberth and Penn Valley, and fell too heavily on South Ardmore, a largely African American neighborhood.

In a related development, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights said yesterday it received four complaints Jan. 14 from members of the South Ardmore community alleging the redistricting plan is racist.

"Specifically," said spokesman David Thomas, the complaints allege "that the plan's separation of the South Ardmore community into two different high schools is based on race and places a disproportionate burden on the district's African American students."

The district has said that geography drives the redistricting plan, and that the plan has an impact on the fewest families. Thomas said his office would rule soon on whether to investigate the complaints.