Arlington School Committee received a detailed report on the district’s buffer-zone strategy and its effect on elementary enrollments and class balance for the current year.

District staff said the strategy — deployed early during enrollment — lowered the number of buffer-zone students assigned to high-pressure schools such as Thompson and Stratton and shifted some students to Hardy, Pierce and Brackett. The presenter said the district had 120 new students assigned from buffer zones this year, down from 148 the prior year, and that the approach reduced the difference between the largest and smallest school from a 287-student range to 219 students.

Staff cautioned that the strategy also produced smaller kindergarten sections in some schools; the presenter said kindergarten enrollment at Dallin was 50 and Pierce was 51 this year and that the district might be able to reduce planned kindergarten sections by up to three under certain budget scenarios, which would widen class-size ranges in some places toward a cap of about 25. The report noted that Dallin had only four buffer-zone students this year, making it hard to shift additional students into that school.

Committee members asked for more granular mapping and choice data — for example, which buffer-zone addresses select eastward schools versus westward schools — to help decide whether to redraw boundaries. Staff said the GIS linkage that previously produced color-coded maps broke when the town’s GIS manager left; staff offered to run manual address-level analyses and to follow up with town colleagues about restoring the GIS workflow.

Staff recommended continuing to set buffer strategy early in the enrollment process and making assignment decisions with the district’s budget and section-planning scenarios in mind. They flagged remaining pressure points in the Bishop–Stratton–Thompson cluster and recommended committee input, possible subcommittee review (budget and community relations), and further modeling ahead of the FY27 budget cycle. No policy action was taken tonight.