What is a proper definition of "Balanced Enrollment"?

As PISD considers revising its 2009 feeder alignment plan, I have been struggling to understand the term "Balanced Enrollment" as it applies to our Senior High schools.  In talking with a few friends, I have found the term means different things to different people.

Here is the Board of Trustees' definition, as communicated by Missy Bender in the PISD video entitled, "District in Motion: Preparing for the Feeder Alignment Transition":

"Balanced enrollment over time is not equally distributed student enrollment across the district.  It's balanced enrollment at a campus over time."

Source:http://pisdtv.pisd.edu/communications/features/9P9s3yzeipsgdDKDWDNG
Approx. Time: 03:38

I always have trouble when someone uses a term to define itself.  In my profession, that is called recursion.  This implies an "endless loop" or, more succinctly, "confusion".  But at least Missy tells us what balanced enrollment is not.

Here are ideas I received as I discussed this with some PISD friends.  Each of six people has his own definition of "Balanced Enrollment":

1. Identical enrollments across each of three Senior High campuses 
2. Aligning the enrollment so that you balance it across the 3 schools as close to the optimal use of each of their respective functional capacities as reasonably possible over time. 
3. The assignment of students to a campus in proportion to the population of students in a given attendance zone.  If 25% of the students live in an attendance zone, then 25% of the total student population should attend the Senior High in that attendance zone. 
4. A state of constant enrollment amounts over time; a steady number of students over time.
5. No wide swings in enrollment from year to year within each senior high school.  Each school should have a number at which it tends to level out at.  No large disparity in student population among the 3 senior high schools. 
6. Schools within each feeder zone level off and remain stable - and represent the percentage of the population that lives in the zone.  It is not called "equal enrollments" for a reason.

So just based on this small sample, it is no wonder that there is some confusion about what "Balanced Enrollment"' really means.  Perhaps the underlying problem is that the term "Balanced Enrollment" is a pretty nebulous concept at best.  So bear with me as I analyze it below. 

"Balance" literally means "equal distribution of amount" ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/balance ).  So to me, a very literal person, "balanced enrollment" means "equal distribution of students".  So it follows that "balanced enrollment" would mean "identical enrollments across three Senior High campuses".  But this is exactly the opposite of the definition offered by the Board of Trustees. 

Do you see why I am struggling here? 

Now I ask you to comment below.  What is your definition of "Balanced Enrollment"?  All I ask is that you limit your comments to the context of our Plano ISD Senior High campuses.

Do our two new Trustees recommend building a fourth Senior High school?

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: In the campaign running up to the May 2011 election, both David Stolle and Mike Friedman said  "No" to a fourth Senior High school.

Complete answer: A full transcript for the April 14th, 2011, Key Communicators Forum follows.  I report, you read, and then you decide.

Source - http://pisdtv.pisd.edu/communications/features/EufT1YIXvCWi9AnpVLL0 

Time - Approx. 50:00

Question:

Do you believe that the large class size at the Senior High schools is affecting the quality of education?  Would you consider building another Senior High school?  Why, or why not?


Friedman

We're broke.  Again, and I do not believe we should be looking at spending money on another High school. 

I think we have a lot of inefficiencies in the PISD school district.  We have a lot of schools that are under-served.  We need to go back and do an analysis on all the schools and see if we can fit students in one school or another.  We might have to close a school, possibly, and put students in, uh, or fill up other schools and then bring high schoolers back into the school that we closed down. 

So I think that we need to utilize every square foot we have currently in the PISD and absolutely not get more debt in this next two or three years.


Stolle

Paul's in the classroom right now.  I've been in the classroom, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that class size matters.  And, when you have a large class, it is much more difficult to teach. 

In a perfect world, yes, we would build another high school.  We have, I think, three of the six largest graduating classes in the state of Texas.  Our district is based on an economy of scale, so we have large classes.  We expect that. 

But I believe we're at the point that we could use another high school.  However, reality is that that high school is at least 10 years away, if not longer. 

So, as a Trustee, we can start now with planning that, planning for another new high school.  But it's not coming any time soon.

What we can do, however, is what the board started to do with an academy.  We can build academies throughout town.  However, before we start with one academy, we need to make sure we know where we're going, and that we have a plan so that we're able to use those academies successfully and efficiently.