Editorial: Jefferson suit defies elementary reasoning

The protesters still battling the relocation of Jefferson Elementary School might want to review a childhood admonition: Don’t cry over spilled milk.

Instead, they’ve remained angry and have hired a Seattle lawyer in the hope of a dramatic turnaround that pivots on semantics.

Does “modernize” or “replace” also mean “move?”

As if Spokane Public Schools doesn’t have enough challenges, now it must spend precious dollars sparring with the lawyer for disgruntled patrons, including school board candidate Sally Fullmer.

This saga began when the school board decided to move the school from its current location at 37th Avenue and Grand Boulevard to 37th Avenue and Manito Boulevard because it would distance students from a busy intersection and it would be less expensive and more practical to build a new school than to renovate the old one.

Before making the decision last year, board members undertook a year of analysis that included traffic and home sale surveys. They held public hearings and received hundreds of comments. Then they publicized and considered six proposals before finally settling on the current plan: build the new school on the west side and keep the old one for administrative offices.

In short, the move was deliberative, thoughtful and transparent.

In such cases, there will always be people who are unhappy. Surrounding neighbors and the school’s patrons are split, but the dissenters have remained vocal. And this week they filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the decision.

The basis of the lawsuit is that the district didn’t explicitly state the possibility of relocating schools when it ran a bond election to modernize or replace Jefferson, Finch, Hutton and Westview elementaries and Ferris High School. So, the lawsuit contends, the district cannot abandon the current site of Jefferson. The suit is silent on what this means for the other schools.

Such legalistic nitpicking would’ve precluded the flexibility needed for other school projects that have been built or are under way.

The new Lincoln Heights Elementary School was shifted to the southwest end of its property. Ferris High School’s main building will be to the east of the current classrooms. The Jefferson move does cover a greater distance, but the reasoning was sound. It’s fanciful to think that the outcome of a bond election that included many other schools would’ve been different.

Hopefully, the court will reject the lawsuit as frivolous word play.