Lake Washington School District Makes Changes to Handle Growing Student Population - Lake Washington School District:Dr. Kimball decides to change the District school configuration and shift three elementary school feeder patterns.
Lake Washington School District is growing, by the equivalent of one elementary school a year for the next five years. The district has looked at alternatives to house this boom in student population and made two decisions to use its current school building space more efficiently, effective 2012-13. The School Board last night approved Dr. Kimball's decision to: 1) change its school grade configuration and 2) shift three elementary school feeder patterns. Says Kimball:
“If we don’t make any changes, we will need over 100 portable classrooms at the elementary level and about 28 at the secondary level to house the expected enrolment and to provide space for all-day kindergarten in the next five years,” noted Dr. Kimball. “Changing feeder patterns reduces the need at the secondary level. I know it will be a difficult change for families who have expectations and connections to specific schools but we have to find the most efficient ways to use our current space and this is one of them. Changing the grade configuration will make another large difference.”
Three changes in feeder patterns are planned, to coincide with the 2012-13 grade configuration change:
Bell Elementary will feed into Finn Hill Junior High and Juanita High School, instead of Kirkland Junior High and Lake Washington High School.
Audubon Elementary will feed into Rose Hill Junior High and Lake Washington High School instead of Redmond Junior High and Redmond High School.
These changes effectively shift population westward, from Redmond High through Lake Washington High to Juanita High School. In addition, Einstein Elementary students will shift from Evergreen Junior High to Redmond Junior High but will still go on to Redmond High School."
The 2012 - 2013 grade reconfiguration will be: a change to K-5 elementary, 6-8 middle school and 9-12 high school. The reconfiguration will shift one grade out of the elementary schools where space is already tight and move the population to the secondary schools, where more space is available. In Dr. Kimball said at the May 3 School Board meeting he doesn't know how to accommodate the space needs of the high schools and listed three options - capital levys and capital bond and a portable re-design.
Read the entire LWSD website news release.
A link to this posting was published in the May 5 Seattle Times online edition under "Redmond Neighborhood News" (LOCAL).
Posted By Bob Yoder
Source: LWSD website on May 4
including the May 3, 2010 School Regular School Board Meeting video.
LWSD Slide Show
if the LWSD had read the 2000 census they would have seen this coming. There will be a LOT of VERY unhappy parents.
ReplyDeleteEinstein should have been at Redmond JR all along. In the boundary changes there was a large
ReplyDeleteparent movement to place all of Einstein at
RJH instead of spliting between the 2 junior highs. As far as Audubon they will have there
kids at a brand new High School. The change reflects back to how the school use to feed before the boundary change.
The new proposal will be sad and glad for many.
long time lake washington sd parent
Audubon use to feed into Rose Hill Jr and should
ReplyDeletehave stayed there. The change was made during the last boundary shift. Lake Washington HS will
be finished and will be a beautiful new facility.
Enstein should have fed into RJH all along and
many voiced there opinion to that fact in the
last boundary change. Many kids that went to
Evergreen JH and Enstein Elem were seperated
from there friends because they were split
between 2 high schools. No matter what you do
someone will be unhappy.