Superintendent Announces Temporary Boundary Recommendation
Moves students from Rosa Parks Elementary to Wilder Elementary next fall to reduce overcrowding
UPDATED: Redmond, Wash. – Today, Dr. Traci Pierce, superintendent of Lake Washington School District, shared via email her proposed temporary boundary change with the parents of students at Rosa Parks Elementary and Wilder Elementary Schools. Dr. Pierce will recommend the temporary boundary committee’s recommendation of Scenario C for the temporary boundary change between these two schools for the 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years.
Dr. Pierce will make that recommendation to the district’s Board of Directors at its Monday, January 14, meeting. The board will vote on the specific proposal at its meeting on January 28. Read More >>
“This option provides the best balance of moving students to Wilder Elementary from Rosa Parks Elementary without placing Wilder over capacity and requiring additional portables at Wilder, which would result in additional cost to the district,” noted Dr. Pierce. “It keeps most neighborhoods together and makes Rosa Parks entirely a walking school, minimizing the transportation impact.”
Scenario C is one of three possible boundary scenarios that the committee shared with Rosa Parks and Wilder Elementary parents in November. The committee considered but rejected eight other scenarios that did not move enough students from Rosa Parks; resulted in Wilder becoming at or over capacity; and/or resulted in transportation concerns.
The three scenarios were presented to parents and community members at an open house on November 29 at Evergreen Middle School. Parent input on these options was sought through paper and web survey instruments. A total of 345 individuals responded, including 256 who identified themselves as having students at Rosa Parks and 87 with students at Wilder.
Scenario C, which moves most of Redmond Ridge East to Wilder, was ranked number one among the three scenarios by 204 out of the 345 parents who responded to the survey.Scenario B was the second choice while Scenario A was a distant third. Survey results are available on the district website.
Survey respondents pointed out that Scenario C would make Rosa Parks a walking school again. It would keep most neighborhoods together and primarily use natural boundaries. Scenario B was seen to impact fewer kids, keep a more steady number of students at each school and preserve the Redmond Ridge neighborhood.
In September, Dr. Pierce met with the Rosa Parks Elementary community who were concerned with the size of the school. The school’s enrollment is 795 and is projected to reach 1,024 by 2015-16 if no change is made. Dr. Pierce informed the Rosa Parks and Wilder Elementary communities in October that a temporary boundary change would be put into place as a short-term solution to addressing the issue of the size of Rosa Parks. The long-term solution to the increasing capacity issues in the district’s Redmond Learning Community is to build additional school(s). The district is working on developing a capital bond measure to put forward to voters in February 2014, which would include a new elementary school.
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About Lake Washington
Lake Washington School District is a high-performing public school district serving Kirkland, Redmond, and Sammamish, Washington. It is the sixth largest district in the state of Washington, with over 25,000 students in 51 schools.
Months worth of work by seven district employees and one outside consultant and they came up with the obvious while ignoring the input they asked for from the community - keep each of the two distinct communities together and significantly reduce the size of Rosa Parks.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Norm Chomsky: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very likely debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on while all the time the presupposition of the system are likely reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
Well done LWSD!