Central Valley SD redraws attendance map

After numerous changes and multiple rounds of community input, the Central Valley School District board of directors approved new high school attendance boundaries earlier this month.

The change was necessary because of the construction of a third high school, Ridgeline, expected to be complete in 2021. A Boundary Review Committee of district employees and community members met for months to sift through the public input and make boundary recommendations.

The group met 13 times in three months and held multiple open houses, said Kent Martin, assistant superintendent for secondary learning and teaching. In addition to considering public input, the committee was tasked with 10 policies to consider, including maintaining the neighborhood feeder system, the percentage of students receiving free and reduced-priced lunch at each school and future growth.

The committee proposed several different versions of the attendance boundary proposal, each slightly different.

“It changed,” Martin said. “Every open house had a new iteration. We didn’t put out something that was the same each time. By the end our committee felt really good that they have met as much of the input as they could.”

Students from Evergreen Middle School and most of the students from North Pines Middle School will attend Central Valley High School. Students from Bowdish and Horizon middle schools and the remainder of the North Pines students will attend University High School. Students from Selkirk and Greenacres middle schools will attend Ridgeline High School in Liberty Lake.

The fact that students from North Pines will attend two different high schools maintains the status quo, Martin said. “North Pines is split,” he said. “It has always been split.”

The attendance boundary changes also included the transfer of about 25 students from Evergreen Middle School to Greenacres Middle School. Those students live in a small area southeast of the intersection of Sprague Avenue and Conklin Road and are within easy walking distance of Greenacres Middle School, Martin said. It will make it easier for those students to participate in after-school activities, he said.

“Kids can always choice back,” he said. “We allow choice as long as there’s room in that grade level.”

The changes in student attendance won’t all take effect when the new school opens in 2021, however. In 2017 the school board approved a transition plan for high school students. When Ridgeline opens in 2021, there will be no seniors there. They will remain at their current high school until they graduate. Juniors will also have the choice to opt back into their original high school.

Things get a little more complicated for students in the class of 2024 and ’25. Students who are sophomores in 2021 can opt back to their original high school if they competed in varsity sports their freshman year or if they have an older sibling who attends their original high school. Incoming freshman can only opt into a different high school if they have an older sibling who attends that school.

Martin said it was beneficial to have that policy in place before the Boundary Review Committee started its work. It gave parents a measure of certainty about what options their children would have once the new high school opened. “I think it helped our process to have that information out there ahead of time,” he said.

Along the way the committee made sure to plan for future growth, most of which is expected to happen in Liberty Lake and the eastern portion of Spokane Valley. Consultants the district hired even met with developers to find out their construction timelines, Martin said.

Care was taken to make sure the three high schools are of similar size. Each has a capacity of 1,600 students. In 2023 the enrollment is projected to be 1,367 at Central Valley, 1,333 at Ridgeline and 1,520 at University.

Martin said the district intends to contact each family affected by the boundary change. Students who will be juniors in 2021 will be asked to decide by April if they plan to opt back into their original high school. Siblings of seniors and “opt back” juniors will be asked to decide by May if they want to opt back as well.

“We’ll start sending letters out probably at the end of next month,” he said.

Martin said he’s proud of the process the school district followed during the boundary review process, including posting each attendance boundary proposal and public comments received on it online.

“We really tried to get input from our community,” he said. “It’s been the most transparent process we could do.”