PITTSFIELD — The challenge: How to get Morningside Community School students to new schools in 2026-27 while minimizing the potential disruptions on those students, their families and indeed, the entire district.

Three options, including a recommended plan designed to keep students together with neighborhood peers without completely redrawing the enrollment map, were on display at a School Committee public hearing at Morningside’s cafeteria late Tuesday afternoon.

The committee is set to vote on a path forward when it meets at 6 p.m. today at City Hall, as part of a packed agenda.

While consultants came up with three potential new maps, the favored plan — Option 3 — would send Morningside students to Capeless, Allendale, Egremont and Williams elementary schools in 2026-27. It's also preferred because it does not redraw the districts for any other elementary schools, limiting disruption in a year when the schools are already moving to a pair of citywide middle schools.

The committee voted in March to “retire” 50-year-old Morningside rather than pour resources into the school and its open floor plan, long cited as a hurdle to classroom success.

The map favored by administrators would send Morningside students in the following directions:

• Students living between the CSX tracks and East Street would attend Egremont. That includes Fenn Street as well as Second, Third and Fourth streets south of the tracks.

• Students living south of the CSX tracks between North Street to the west and Tyler Street to the north would attend Williams. That encompasses the streets around Morningside Community School.

• Students between North Street, Tyler Street and Springside Avenue, and the side streets extending north from Springside would attend Allendale. That includes the neighborhood between Brown Street and Broadview Terrace.

• Students in the North End neighborhoods along the east side of Wahconah Street and the Crane Avenue neighborhoods west of Benedict Road would attend Capeless.

Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips said the goal was to keep cohorts of Morningside students together while minimizing boundary changes. For example, the goal was to use major streets or boundaries — such as Tyler Street, the CSX tracks and Springside Avenue — rather than split up students from the same side streets.

Anthony Ludovic Severe, the lone speaker at a public hearing on new school district boundaries resulting from the closure of Morningside Community School, asked School Committee members to be mindful of the way change will affect students attending new schools in the next few years.

Anthony Ludovic Severe, the only person who spoke during the public hearing, said he's most concerned about current Morningside third graders who will go to a new school for fourth grade, and then to Herberg for fifth grade as part of the middle school restructuring. He asked that school leaders be "mindful" of how those changes will affect students.

"There is going to be a big adjustment, probably a little bit more than you anticipated," he said. "For me the concern is when, when you're a kid, change is a big deal, changing neighborhoods, changing the bus driver that you see."

Phillips, who held three sessions last week with Morningside families to go over the plans, said much the feedback she heard centered on transportation. She said the district plans to run a pilot program for family transportation support to assure caregivers can be a part of their child’s education, as well as late buses for students in the 21st Century after-school program.

Phillips said additional redistricting will be likely in the future if, as planned, a new elementary school is built on the Crosby Elementary School campus. It’s expected that building would consolidate Conte Community School and possibly Stearns Elementary School as well.

If families are unhappy with their placement or have reasons to request a different assignment, intradistrict choice is a possibility, Phillips said. But it might have a different look than in the past: A proposal before the School Committee on Wednesday would create a lottery process for cases when demand outstrips supply.

Such a lottery would be weighted, giving greater consideration to students wanting to follow siblings to a desired school and students from schools that have continually struggled to meet standards.