GREENFIELD — Students who are currently enrolled in an elementary school through intradistrict School Choice will be allowed to remain in their chosen school following a long-awaited School Committee vote Wednesday evening.

Acceptance of new intradistrict School Choice requests, however, will cease for all elementary students beginning with the upcoming 2024-2025 school year. This includes families with children who may not be enrolled yet, but have older siblings who have elected to attend a school that is not their neighborhood one. This marks a change from the current practice, which has allowed incoming kindergartners to attend the same school of choice as their older siblings.

“I’m supportive of ending intradistrict on that timeline,” School Committee member Glenn Johnson-Mussad said Wednesday evening. “I think … people should go to their neighborhood school. I realize it’s going to be a difficult transition. People made decisions for their families based on assumptions of existing policies continuing, but policies do change and looking at the bigger picture, I think that that would be the best way to proceed.”

Beginning with the 2025-2026 school year, students already enrolled in an elementary school of choice may remain until progressing to Greenfield Middle School.

“We’ve heard from so many families that there must be a way to consider an already-made or established choice,” said School Committee Chair Amy Proietti. “It seemed possible to try to accommodate.”

Also beginning that school year, the committee will implement a plan to redraw boundaries to “better reflect the makeup of the city,” while also moving fifth grade to the elementary school and eighth grade to the middle school.

Superintendent Christine DeBarge previously explained that under this plan, the district map would be redrawn so that students who reside at Greenfield Gardens would be sent to Newton School, Leyden Woods to the Discovery School at Four Corners, and Oak Courts to Federal Street School.

“Hopefully this is a good path toward equity for our district,” Proietti said.

The three votes at Wednesday night’s School Committee meeting followed more than three years of conversation about redrawing the district map, and recent pushback from families of intradistrict School Choice students who feared their children would be expected to leave their chosen school and be educated at their neighborhood school. DeBarge said that regardless of which direction the committee voted, the decisions would have an impact on the budget, staffing and class scheduling.

“This decision is somewhat like an iceberg in that the tip of it — as complicated as the tip of it is — there are many, many details that aren’t clear to the committee,” she said. “It’s not necessarily your responsibility to deal with those details. That’s why, in great part, it’s exceptionally helpful for there to be a decision sooner.”

Amid a discussion about implementing redistricting changes sooner than the 2025-2026 school year, DeBarge said that given the committee’s vote to allow students to age out of their school of choice, implementing redistricting changes in the upcoming school year, rather than in the next one, would create a space issue at the Discovery School at Four Corners. This would mean the special education programs at Newton School and Four Corners would need to switch, she said.

“We have … a solution rooted in a lot of work on behalf of the superintendent and her staff, and amazing outreach and engagement from the subcommittee for redistricting,” Proietti explained. “I thank members [Jean] Wall, Johnson-Mussad and [Elizabeth] Deneeve for their work, and of course all of the members of the community ... who engaged in the process throughout.”

Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter (X): @MaryEByrne.