I would like to thank Laura Hancock and the Deseret Morning News for having the courage to print the article "Church lines = school lines?" (Dec. 11). I also wanted to explain my position on this issue.

As a school board member, I believe in neighborhood schools. I believe children want to attend school with their friends and associates and that school is a more secure place for them emotionally when they do.

The district's building and boundary policy supports this belief, saying that ideally boundaries should "support established neighborhoods," "follow natural or man-made geographical features, i.e., rivers, major roads" (which define neighborhood boundaries), "minimize distances between students and their schools" and "minimize the number of hazardous routes and the degree of hazard with each route."

Recently, district staff proposed sending students from the Park Ridge area who now attend Westridge on Grandview Hill to Amelia Earhart, which is farther from them. Getting from Park Ridge to Amelia Earhart requires crossing over railroad tracks, under I-15, and over the Provo River.

In trying to determine how disruptive this move would be to the children (the building and boundary policy also says we should "seek minimal disruption"), I asked ecclesiastical leaders where the LDS children in Park Ridge attended church. I learned that they were all incorporated into LDS wards on Grandview Hill. This fact was added evidence to me that these children should be kept at Westridge.

Though the building and boundary policy gives me ample reason to support my belief that Park Ridge should remain at Westridge, I have also wanted and proposed an addition to the policy that states that in drawing boundaries the board may consider other organizational boundaries that affect the peer group relationships of children.

In Provo, this would include LDS ward boundaries. In other communities, it might include boundaries of other religious denominations. I have not been able to get this proposed amendment to the policy on the agenda, even though actions consistent with it are being taken.

This discussion is one aspect of the church-state issue the board has been addressing. But there is another church-state issue or problem, which, I feel, has been handled inappropriately. The district is proposing to divide up the poorest area of our community, which includes the Boulders Apartments, into several sections and send these sections to different schools.

They are doing this on the advice of LDS Church leaders in the area, with whom the board president and superintendent met, without the knowledge or participation of the board. This group of LDS Church leaders includes a professor of education at Brigham Young University and a member of the City Council, I am told. Apparently, these discussions also took place in meetings of the BYU-public school partnership.