Northview Shares Their 'Cookies'

By Hailee Cederquist

staff writer

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They don’t take the bus. They often have to coordinate their after school activities meticulously. Their homes are not within the boundaries of Northview. Yet, they are a large part of our community.

Out of about 3300 students in the entire Northview district, a staggering number of them are school of choice students, meaning they live outside of Northview, but choose to pursue an education in this district. In the 2015-2016 school year, 1179 Northview students were school of choice, and this number grows every year. The Northview school district takes in more school of choice students than any other district in Kent county.

Why do so many students get the chance to attend school here? Northview is a steadily growing community. Our schools are big enough to support great athletic programs and helpful classrooms, but small enough to provide caring environments for students. However, space isn’t the only reason that Northview loves it’s school of choice students, according to superintendent Dr. Scott Korpak.

He says that students from outside of the Northview district bring something new to the table. Different backgrounds and different cultures give resident students an understanding of environments outside of Northview. According to Korpak, the more students, the better! Of course, the school district also receives a certain amount of funding per school of choice student, but it’s so much more than that.

Dr. Korpak commented that this is a positive community. He’s sure that all residents of the community are proud and happy to provide an education for a wide range of students. “Say you’ve got a plate of cookies, and one of the cookies is just really fantastic. So what do you want to do? You want to share. You want others to have the chance to have one of those cookies too. I think that there’s a great sense in our community about Northview being a really great school. We want to share that,” Korpak said.

It might be a bit of a hassle sometimes, figuring out how to get to school or extracurricular activities, but for many school of choice students at Northview, it’s totally worth it. “We are Northview. Every student is a part of that,” Dr. Korpak ended. They play sports. They get involved with helping the community. It doesn’t matter that many students in Northview live beyond district lines. We are all Northview.

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