District purchases land to be used for new school
The Central Valley School District purchased 17 acres of property last month that could become the site of a new elementary school.
The district paid about $50,000 per acre for the site at Mission Avenue and Long Road, just west of Barker Road and north of Interstate 90, said Superintendent Mike Pearson.
While the property will be reserved for a new elementary school in that area, the district will continue to look for more property in the northeast part of it’s area for another elementary school.
Central Valley is dealing with rapid growth in the eastern part of the 80-square-mile district.
Both Liberty Lake and Greenacres elementary schools are over or nearing capacity. Liberty Lake has 716 students, and Greenacres has 538. Liberty Lake was built for 600 students and Greenacres has room for 591.
Kindergarten registration started March 1, and parents lined up outside Liberty Lake that day to enroll their children.
The school has room for only 132 new kindergarten students and expects to surpass that number. By Tuesday morning, the school had enrolled 117 students, said Melanie Rose, district spokeswoman.
“We will continue to keep enrolling them,” even if the number goes above 132, Rose said. “But whether or not those students will be able to remain at (Liberty Lake) remains to be seen.”
No decision has been made about what to do with the high enrollment numbers at Liberty Lake Elementary, Rose said.
Currently the district is considering a facilities concept, expected to go before the school board at the end of March.
A community facilities review committee was charged by the board to gather community input about the proposed plan, which includes building two new schools, remodeling and updating six, and replacing and transitioning several others.
The committee has been working to gather information about the proposed facilities concept from the Central Valley community over the past several months. It has more than 1,000 comments from parents and community members about the plan, Rose said.
The committee plans to present the findings of the input to the board March 28. It is not known when the board would make a decision to move forward with the plan.