The year before his son started school, Aaron Dean toured, researched and read up on all Bloomington schools before selecting Normandale Hills Elementary.
Now, he worries all that work may have been futile.
School officials are looking to tighten a longtime "liberal" policy that's given parents the choice of where to enroll their children in Bloomington's schools. It's part of a process to change school zone boundary lines next fall to "right-size" schools that are over or under capacity.
Five possible new boundary maps were to be released today.
"To do a U-turn and take that away when our child is partway through school doesn't make sense," Dean said. "Had we known they would be restricting enrollment ... I don't know we would've bought the house we did. We'll have a decision to make whether we still want to stay in Bloomington schools."
Fifth-graders wouldn't move under the proposed plans, but some 1,000 younger elementary students could change schools next fall.
School district spokesman Rick Kaufman said officials understand parents don't want their choices limited, but he said boundary changes are long overdue.
"What we're trying to do is make it more manageable," he said of enrollment. "If we did nothing, we don't resolve the issues that we're currently dealing with."