In the end, the board voted 4-3 to table a request that a planned subdivision be redistricted from the North district to the Salisbury district until a newly-formed committee looks at redistricting issues.

Developer Jake Alexander Jr. is building “The Reserve,” a single-family housing subdivision off Old Mocksville Road. The land, where Alexander says building will begin in about 30 days, is in the North district.

But it is across the street from the Eagle Heights subdivision and near other subdivisions around the Country Club of Salisbury, which all are in the Salisbury High School attendance zone.

Alexander said he asked for the change “largely because all of the surrounding neighborhoods are in the Overton, Knox and Salisbury High areas, and the people who live here will ... be an extension of that neighborhood.”

The school board’s Building and Grounds Committee gave the request its blessing on a 2-1 vote last week, and forwarded a recommendation that the full board do the same.

Vick Bost, Building and Grounds chairman, said Overton Elementary School and Knox Middle School are neighbors to the new subdivision, and Salisbury High has plenty of space for students who might live there.

He said approval shouldn’t spur the community opposition that other proposed redistricting has this year, since nobody lives in the subdivision yet.

But it did generate dissension among board members, as redistricting has all year.

Clyde Miller, whose change of heart reversed an earlier redistricting plan, said he’s not convinced the new homes would be closer to Salisbury High than to North district schools.

Dr. Ada Fisher said that while she supports bolstering Salisbury High’s enrollment, one of the “reasons we’re in the mess we’re in is that we cater to housing patterns in redistricting.”

Bost countered that the board hasn’t catered to housing patterns as much as it has catered to communities, and asked if the board can’t “put kids in schools closest to their own neighborhoods, then what can we do?”

Fisher pointed out that some proposed redistricting options would reassign students in the area surrounding Alexander’s new subdivision to North schools. She moved to table the request until at least November, when the board expects a committee to make preliminary recommendations.