"Last fall, the board and administrators felt there were lots of questions that we needed to talk about," Board President Nancy Kalchbrenner said. As a result, the Rockford school board put off plans for elementary school zoning. But now those questions are back on the table. During a meeting Friday, discussion centered around catching up new board members on the issues surrounding elementary zoning. And getting new data about how the current choice system works to see if zoning is needed to begin with. "As board members we can look at that and see what exactly does that mean and how might that impact us going forward," Kalchbrenner said. Workers from the district's Family Resource Center presented Kindergarten numbers. They showed for the coming school year, 83 percent of students received their first choice for schools, and 44 percent got a school close to home or with siblings. Superintendent Linda Hernandez said that's good news, but only a snapshot. "You have to really hear from everybody to find out how they feeling about the process," Hernandez said. Hernandez also raised an earlier concern about achieving socio-economic balance with elementary zoning. But that could be offset by sharing resources among schools. "If we're able to take kids through reading and math in the morning, in the afternoon we could send those reading and math coaches to other schools having difficulty," Hernandez said. Another question emerging friday was using a phase-in approach to zoning, like the district did with middle and high school zoning. Kalchbrenner says previous research shows that's hard to achieve with the younger grades. And would mean immediate changes that could be hard to swallow for students and their families. Kalchbrenner says a former district committee working on elementary zoning presented a report to the board about the difficulty of a phase-in approach. She says that should be something the board discusses now and not later on in the processs. Their next meeting on the zoning issue is set for Saturday May 17th. There weren't any comments from parents at Friday's meeeting. Previously parents protested the zoning, fearing it would elimiate valuable programs and further segregate the city. Superintendent Linda Hernandez says their input will be taken as this process continues.