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GREENSBORO — Guilford County Schools wants to put administrators in local communities by adding five assistant superintendents.

The plan will not change where students go to school or school board voting districts.

The Board of Education voted 8-1 Thursday night in favor of a regional map that organizes county schools into four regions.

Each will be led by a regional superintendent and staffed with curriculum and school support personnel.

Board member Garth Hébert voted against the measure. Board members Deena Hayes and Kris Cooke were absent.

The change is organizational only — affecting the central office administration and support staff.

The regional, or assistant, superintendents will be housed in offices within their regions, and they will report to Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green.

Green said this structure will decentralize core school-support areas such as transportation, discipline and exceptional children, placing staff closer to the schools and community. Green’s goal is for the school system to react more quickly to each school’s needs.

Regions were selected by looking at areas with similar communities and their high schools, and then looking at the middle and elementary schools that feed those high schools.

Green also wants a fifth assistant superintendent position to be responsible for a group of 10 low-performing schools, which will be an enrichment group.

The proposed regions are:

• Central: Mostly Greensboro and Jamestown.
• Western: High Point, Colfax, Oak Ridge and Stokesdale.
• Northern: Summerfield, northern Greensboro, Browns Summit and the Reedy Fork area.
• Southeast: Eastern and southeastern Greensboro, McLeansville and Gibsonville, and the area from I-85 Business to the Alamance County line.
• Enrichment region: Schools described as low-performing academically, with high rates of poverty and “historically challenged”: Bessemer, Montlieu and Wiley elementary; Hairston, Jackson and Welborn middle; and Andrews, Dudley and Smith High.

On Thursday night, there still was no information available about how much this reorganization will cost.

Green has promised to use school-owned office space to keep cost to a minimum but said there will be some cost associated with getting that space ready for use.

“The board has expressed its reservations about cost,” said board member Paul Daniels.

“But we’re still waiting to find out what this is going to cost us.”

Lewis Ferebee, the school administrator responsible for identifying the office space, said now that the school board has settled on a regional map, he can provide hard numbers within a few weeks.

Board member Amos Quick questioned why some schools were included in the enrichment group but others were not.

Ferebee said they created the enrichment group by looking at high schools that were historically the lowest performers and the middle and elementary schools with similar histories that feed those high schools.

Ferebee said he would return with more information about regional offices during the board’s next scheduled meeting.

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com