LETTER: Overcrowding at elementary schools may not be real, By Susan Wilkins

OVERCROWDING AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS MAY NOT BE REAL

LETTER:  As a parent of four students currently enrolled in the Lake Washington School District, I have had many years of volunteering and attending events at their various schools. Over the past decade, my children have attended Mann, Rockwell, Einstein and Rush Elementary Schools, as well as Redmond Junior High and Redmond Senior High. I have had the opportunity to observe day-to-day activities first-hand while volunteering and attending events at the schools. I voted for bond measures, EP&O and technology levies and I-728, the initiative that was passed to reduce class sizes in 2000.

We are now being asked to pass a $66 million dollar levy on February 8 to add additional space at Redmond High School and Eastlake High School and to build a new Science and Technology High School out on SR202 on the lot next to Alcott Elementary. The district has claimed through its mailings and speeches that we are almost out of space for students, that more students are arriving every year, and that soon we will be double shifting or transporting students long distances by bus. While some schools, such as Rosa Parks Elementary at Redmond Ridge and Alcott Elementary east of Redmond are extremely overcrowded, most of the schools in the district are overcrowded because of the way the district defines school capacity and not because there are too many students.

Let’s look at how the district determines whether a school is overcrowded. At each school, the facilities department counts all of the homeroom classrooms in the school and portables, and then multiplies that total by a set number of students per classroom. For elementary schools, the set number of students per classroom is 23. So for example, at Horace Mann Elementary, they have 17 classrooms and 17 x 23 = 391*. Enrollment at Horace Mann for the 2010-2011 school year is 483, so by the district’s definition, the school is very overcrowded.

But let’s look at Horace Mann more closely. The school was designed with 17 regular classrooms and an 18th classroom intended for use as a preschool and located next to the two kindergarten classrooms. The 18th classroom has been used as a regular classroom for years, but it is still allocated as a special use room and isn’t included when the district calculates Horace Mann’s total capacity.

Furthermore, the target teacher:student ratio for grades K-1 is 19 students, for grades 2-3 is 24 students, grade 4 is 25 students and grades 5-6 is 27 students. This year, all of the 5th and 6th grades at Horace Mann are at or below their target capacity. The K- 4 classrooms are slightly overcrowded with 26-28 students (but remember that Horace Mann receives about 40 AYP students who transferred from Einstein and Redmond El.) We may not like that each teacher is given so many students, but all of the classes are at the district’s target ratios and building more classroom space will not reduce that ratio.

Additionally, at Horace Mann, classrooms are clustered around a group learning room in a pod. There are 4 pods and each has a group learning area that is the size of a regular classroom. The group learning rooms are occasionally used for small groups and more often for parties, but they are mostly wasted, underutilized space. If the pods were reconfigured and the walls realigned, Horace Mann could have 3 or 4 more usable classrooms.

Einstein Elementary and Redmond Elementary are nearly identical buildings but in the district’s 6-Year Capital Facilities Plan for 2010-2015, Einstein’s capacity is listed as 19 rooms and Redmond El’s capacity is listed as 16 rooms plus 2 small capacity rooms created by splitting a large room. In fact, at Einstein, there are 23 rooms (7 per wing + 2 kindergartens). Einstein’s student capacity is listed as 437 and Redmond El’s is 392 (368 regular + 24 small capacity.) It’s not clear what the capacity of this size building should be, but it seems that the district is under-calculating each school’s total capacity and thus creating the appearance of overcrowding.

Einstein Elementary and Redmond Elementary both have huge common learning areas in the central hallways of their wings that contain mostly coat racks and some tables but are generally wasted space that could be reconfigured into usable classrooms. Redmond Junior High has expansive, odd-shaped areas of common space in its pods that is also underutilized and wasted. The square footage of these common areas is never calculated into the capacity of the schools and yet it could provide space for hundreds of students if it were converted into regular classroom space. The district should take an inventory of its total square footage and how the space is used (or not used) and determine if it could create additional classroom space. The district’s current model for determining school capacity is overly simple and fundamentally flawed.

The district tells us that 22 of 28 elementary schools in the district are already overcrowded and that moving to the K-5 model will alleviate overcrowding. I know that Horace Mann is on the overcrowded list and shouldn’t be. And I have an uneasy feeling that when the 6th graders are transferred to the junior high, Horace Mann will have a few empty, unused classrooms.

Most large companies use facilities planners to maximize how space is utilized. The school district should hire a planner to identify ways that the district can maximize its building resources before looking to build additional facilities and asking taxpayers for more money.

By Susan Wilkins
PTSA member & school volunteer

*Source: Lake Washington School District Six-Year Capital Facility Plan 2010-2015 Appendix A.
This document was not posted on the LWSD website after a citizen request.