Approach 1Contiguous / domino
Fails 3 of 3- 9Moves ~204 to fix 74. Corinth ends at 78%.
- 2Mixed housing 12.9% → 5.0%. Never measured.
- 10Walkers become riders. No transport analysis.
Shawnee Mission · East Feeder · Board votes 26 October
They’d move 204 children to make room for 74.
The same plan erases the only mixed-income housing in our attendance area and puts kids who walk to school onto buses.
We drew two better maps. One moves 80. The other moves the same 204 — and mixed housing goes up instead of down.
74the actual shortfall
204children their plan moves
There is still time to change this — and one number the district hasn’t published that would settle it. Here’s the evidence.
Drag the line.
Everything above it leaves Corinth.
83rd St — the plan
enough — 16%
enough to solve itover-correction
Moved~204
Of capacity78%
2.8× over-correction. Heading for the 70% under-use band.
16% is enough. The plan cuts 32%.
The strip they’re cutting is the only part that’s different.
Almost all of Corinth is $600–800k homes. The exception sits along the northern edge — inside the cut.
Homes under $600k12.9%
Northern strip alone71%
The northernmost 15% is 71% mid-priced homes. The whole area is 13%.
Every neighbour spans three price ranges.
Corinth would span one.
<$200k$200–400k$400–600k$600–800k>$800k
One school is full. The feeder is three-quarters empty.
1,100 spare seats across eight schools, 2030/31.
Corinth112%
Briarwood93%
Prairie85%
Belinder80%
Trailwood70%
Tomahawk66%
Westwood View55%
Highlands40%
filledemptyover
Three sit below the district’s own 70% line. Only Corinth is over. Their plan moves 204 children out of the one school that is full — roughly what it would take to lift Highlands over that line.
522 of 598 don’t ride a bus.
83rd Street was just rebuilt for them — sidewalks, calming, a new crossing. The plan reassigns many of the students it was built for.
Criterion 10. No transport analysis published.
Scored on their rubric.
The district’s own criteria. Swipe.
Approach 2Attendance islands
Contradicts Criterion 1- 1Criterion 1 requires no disconnected islands. This is islands.
- 2Unscored — no demographic data published.
- 9Unscored — no student counts published.
To be fairThe forecast itself
Sound- ✓450+ planning areas, parcel-level geocoding. The model isn’t the problem.
- ✕Criterion 2 was adopted, then never measured.
- ✕Projections stop at 2030/31. Nobody can say how long these lines hold.
Swipe → for all three
The choice
Their two. Ours.
Pick a plan on each side and drag the divider across the map.
Left
Right
Numbers on the next screen ↓
What each one costs.
Approach 1 against Somerset.
Approach 1Theirs — north to 83rd
- Moved
- 204
- Corinth
- 78%
- Mixed
- 5.0%
Over-corrects 2.8×. Takes the mixed housing and the walk zone.
SomersetOurs — Somerset + south trim
- Moved
- 80
- Corinth
- 99%
- Mixed
- 6.6%
The line everyone knows. Alone it leaves Corinth 18 over, so it needs a small southern trim — and mixed housing still falls.
Two ways to do this better. Theirs is neither.
Somerset moves 80 children instead of 204. 89th & Lee moves the same 204 they do — and mixed housing rises to 19.1% instead of collapsing to 5%.
Get the dates before the 26 Oct vote →The details, including what ours doesn’t fix
89th & Lee is the cleanest proof. It moves 208 children — the same as their plan, within four — and Corinth lands at the same 78%. The only difference is direction. Theirs takes mixed housing from 12.9% to 5.0%. This takes it to 19.1%. Identical disruption, opposite result, which is how you know the loss of diversity is a choice and not a constraint.
Durability is the real question. A deeper cut buys more years. If Corinth keeps growing at the rate RSP forecasts, their plan holds to about 2039 and Somerset is back over capacity by 2031 — on that future they are right. If Corinth follows the district’s own projected elementary decline, Somerset holds past 2040 and their plan drifts toward the 70% floor. RSP stopped publishing building-level numbers at 2030/31, so nobody outside the district can tell which it is.
Highlands stays at 40%. Ours doesn’t solve that, and we’re not pretending otherwise. A school 58 students below the district’s own floor deserves its own public process — not a quiet rescue paid for by Corinth.
Somerset alone does not solve it. We traced the actual curve of Somerset Drive off the district’s own map rather than drawing a straight line. Everything north of it is only ~56 children, which leaves Corinth at 103% — still 18 over. Pair it with a small southern trim and it works (80 moved, 99%), but mixed housing still lands at 6.6%, because any northern cut takes the strip that holds it.
Where the students go. Corinth’s southern edge borders both Trailwood and Briarwood. Trailwood has 151 spare seats and already runs a split feeder between SM East and SM South; Briarwood is at 93% and can absorb about 40. That is roughly 191 seats against 89th & Lee’s 208 — the reason we present it as proof rather than as the plan.
How the maps were made. Attendance-area shapes and the Somerset Drive centreline are digitized from RSP’s own boundary map. The southern trim is still modelled as a band rather than street-by-street — a real proposal would follow streets. Student counts come from RSP’s published density surface, calibrated to RSP’s own totals.
The strongest argument for their plan
Maybe they sized it for ten years.
It’s the one defence we can’t rule out. So we modelled it. Tap a future.
District elementary enrollment falls 2.8% between 2031 and 2036 — RSP’s own ten-year figure.
Their plan in 2035/3676%drifts toward the 70% floor
Somerset in 2035/3696%holds past 2040
On this future, a cut a third the size lasts just as long.
Which future arrives is the whole question — and RSP’s building-level projections stop at 2030/31. They published ten-year numbers for the district and five-year numbers per school. The figures that would settle this exist in their model. Ask for them before the vote.
Before 26 October.
That’s the Board vote. Four public input nights come first. Ask one question at them: publish the ten-year, building-level projections. We’ll send the dates, the room, and a one-page brief you can read in the parking lot.
28 SepSM North
29 SepSM East
5 OctSM North
6 OctSM East
Or email the district directly — smsdboundaries@smsd.org
Now draw your own.
Pick a direction and a size. We’ll score it against theirs.
Students moved81
Corinth99%
Mixed housing kept14.8%
Solves capacity.
Scored against both published options on the next screen ↓
How yours scores.
Yours vs the two published options
| Yours | Approach 1 | Approach 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Students moved | 81−123 | 204 | not published |
| Mixed housing kept | 14.8%+9.8 | 5% | not published |
| Corinth utilisation | 99% | 78.3% | not published |
| Solves capacity | Yes | Yes | unknown |
| Contiguous | Yes | Yes | No — islands |
Approach 2 has no row of its own because the district published no student counts, no demographic impact and no routing for it. It also contradicts Criterion 1 by design.
Cutting southwest raises Corinth’s mixed-housing share because the low-value housing sits at the north edge. RSP noted southern flexibility is limited by the feeder boundary — but Trailwood is inside the feeder, has 151 spare seats and already runs a split feeder. That is exactly the option nobody modelled.
Check us.
Every figure traces to these. We’d rather be corrected than believed.
RSP Enrollment AnalysisMar 2026 · 101 slidesBoundary Analysis Update22 Jun 2026 · BOEBoundary process & timelinesmsd.orgWalk & bike commitmentssmsd.org
Housing mix by attendance areaCSVAll 34 schools — capacity & projectionsCSVMethod & limitationsWhat’s estimated
Housing figures are area-weighted. Student counts are apportioned from RSP’s published density map and calibrated to RSP’s own totals. Enrollment figures are transcribed and match the June deck exactly.