Denton school officials will present a modified version of proposed elementary attendance zones for the 2010-11 school year to parents and residents in a final public hearing tonight at Providence Elementary School.

The amended version of the proposed boundaries is for Denton’s 21st elementary school, which is scheduled to open in the district’s eastern region in the Cross Oaks Ranch development along the U.S. Highway 380 Corridor. Construction on the school is expected to start this summer, district officials said, with the school scheduled to open for the 2010-11 school year.

One campus, Providence Elementary, will be impacted by the proposed boundary change, said Gene Holloway, district director of transportation.

About 20 parents attended the first of two public hearings Tuesday to discuss the proposed boundaries. The final hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. today at Providence.

At Tuesday’s hearing, a group of mothers who live in Emerald Sound, a housing subdivision east of the site of the new campus, conveyed a desire to remain at Providence and not have their children moved to a new campus. Parents also expressed concerns about staffing the new campus.

Projections presented by Holloway showed that, depending on the economy and the housing market, children living in the Emerald Sound area who are currently proposed to attend the Cross Oaks Ranch campus could possibly be rezoned again within the next three to five years.

“The idea here is that Cross Oaks Ranch, once built out, will be totally a neighborhood school because of its attendance density,” Holloway said.

Rebekha Thompson, a mother of two children who will start kindergarten and second grade next year, said she fears her children will be displaced by rezoning multiple times before finishing elementary school. The prospected rezoning within the next three to five years would be the third to impact her housing development since 2004, she said.

Thompson said she and some of her neighbors are committed to Providence and want to stay there.

“With the projected outcome of Cross Oaks Ranch, we’ll be back in the same boat we are in here,” she said. “I don’t necessarily say the new school will be bad. I just don’t want to move a third time.”

Holloway said he plans to return to Providence on Thursday with a modified proposal that collapses the boundary east of Naylor Road, which includes Emerald Sound, to possibly allow those students to remain at Providence.

The original proposed boundary, which is only preliminary, Holloway said, has zoned students living in the area south of U.S. 380 west to Lincoln Park, east and south of Lincoln Park on a line west following the Elm Fork Trinity Watershed southwest to Lewisville Lake to attend the new school.

Holloway said he presumes that zoning Emerald Sound children back into the Providence zone will result in a variance of 50 to 60 students. He said he would look at what’s beneficial in accommodating the request.

“It depends upon demographics. We’ll just have to look at options,” Holloway said. “We may be looking at taking the boundary at FM720 to 380. We’ll query that area to see what happens and what kind of options and student populations we need to populate the new elementary.”

Julia Kappel, a resident of Emerald Sound who is the mother of a child finishing kindergarten, said it’s been known since Providence opened in 2004 that her development may be rezoned to another campus. She said the reality is that Providence Elementary is overcrowded and a new campus will allow students to learn in smaller classroom settings.

Kappel said that while she’s concerned about the possibility of her child leaving a school with highly qualified teachers, she is confident that if the new campus is staffed with administrators and staff resembling what’s offered at Providence, there won’t be a problem.

She said that if students have a fairly strong chance to finish their elementary grades at the new campus, she sees the new campus as an opportunity for students to get a good education in smaller classroom settings.

‘This [Providence] was once a new school, too,” she said. “All I want is the best-quality education for our students,” she said.

Kelly Wilcox, a mother of two children attending Providence who lives in Cross Oaks Ranch, said she welcomes the new campus.

The neighborhood is split between two campuses — Providence and Savannah — and she would like them all to attend one school where they know one another. She said she would also like to see the district pull from surrounding subdivisions such as Emerald Sound to provide the campus with a diverse and balanced demographic makeup.

“There’s no cohesion in the neighborhood,” Wilcox said. “We need to put our community back together again. I’m looking forward to having a school that will bring our community back together again.”

Current enrollment at Providence is 745 students, Holloway said, and that figure is expected to jump to more than 870 by the fall 2010 semester. The opening of the Cross Oaks Ranch campus will cut the intended enrollment by more than half and allow both campuses to increase enrollment by more than 200 students if additional students move into the boundary area.

School district spokeswoman Sharon Cox said all concerns and comments collected from the meetings Tuesday and today will be documented and presented to the school board in a workshop presentation at its next regular meeting, May 26.

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com .