During the next few weeks, Paul Harding High School students will make some tough decisions about which high school to attend next year.

Students will be asked to list two schools in order of preference. If capacity limitations make accommodating students’ wishes impossible, school assignments will be decided by a lottery.

During a meeting Tuesday, the East Allen County Schools board voted 6-1 to close Harding as a high school at the end of the school year. Starting next fall, the building will house seventh- and eighth-graders currently attending Prince Chapman Academy.

Freshmen will move to the building in the fall of 2012, when it will reopen as a magnet school called the Paul Harding College and Career Academy. The district will continue to add classes of students until the building holds grades 7 through 12.

Eighth-graders will need to apply to attend the academy, which will be open to students throughout the district.

Board members called the decision to close Harding difficult but said it was necessary to avoid state takeover of the district.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of shock, particularly from people who didn’t come to meetings,” board member Stephen Terry said. “But we have an opportunity for a new beginning.”

The district will conduct meetings for parents and students to help guide them through the transfer process, Superintendent Karyle Green said. Students will be given “school profiles,” describing programs, clubs, extracurricular activities and other offerings available at the schools.

The Harding guidance department will help students through their course-selection process for next year, Green said.

The district plans to form a Paul Harding High School Transition Team to ensure that students are represented and able to participate in their new schools. The team will discuss how student transfers will affect class rank, athletic teams, student council and other issues.

Green hopes students will have their school assignments by mid-January at the latest.

Although the district expects all students to receive their first school choice, preference will be determined by grade.

Current juniors and their siblings will be given first choice; sophomores and their siblings will be given second choice; freshmen and their siblings will be given third choice; and entering eighth-grade students will have the last choice.

As part of its transition plan, the board also voted to close New Haven and Village elementary schools.

Starting next fall, New Haven Elementary students will attend Highland Terrace from kindergarten through second grade and Meadowbrook from third through fifth grade.

Village students will attend Southwick from kindergarten through second grade and Prince Chapman Academy from third to sixth grade.

Alyssa Lewandowski, who represents the New Haven community on the board, voted against the plan because she thought it involved too much transition for New Haven Elementary students.

“I prefer we don’t shift them just yet,” she said. “This is a lot of shifting.”

Although some of the details revealed Tuesday were new, the plan to turn Harding into a magnet school has been in place since October, when the board voted on a district redesign plan that would close six elementaries but keep all of the district’s five high schools open and renovate or build additional facilities.

The district’s original transition plan involved placing Harding students at a freshman academy at New Haven Elementary and New Haven High School next school year while Harding was transformed into a magnet school.

After the plan was unveiled, a group of Harding parents called Parents for Quality Education in 2010 called the plan discriminatory and demanded that every Harding student be able to attend the Career Academy in August 2011.

Although about 70 percent of East Allen’s students are white, Harding’s student body is largely black.

dhaynie@jg.net