School Crowding Solutions Sought

Volunteers for the Coeur d’Alene School District will be going door-to-door this fall to collect opinions on how to relieve crowded conditions at the schools.

The school board Monday gave the green light to the community survey.

Residents will get to help choose from a number of unappealing temporary solutions to ease overcrowding.

The dozen options before the district’s long-range planning committee caused much “emotion and turmoil” at its last meeting, said Hazel Bauman, the district’s elementary instructional director.

Among the ideas being considered are creating a kindergarten center, perhaps in the portables at the Coeur d’Alene High School, to free up room in the elementary schools.

Then sixth-graders could move to the elementary schools from the swelling middle schools.

Another new idea for making space is to create an annex at the alternative high school, and reschedule the high school classes in the evening.

“I don’t think we’ll get the community to agree, but we can compromise,” said Ann Smart, chairman of the long-range planning committee.

The temporary strategies are necessary to house students while the district attempts to finance and build a third middle school, which may take three years.

In other business Monday, Bauman told the board that early registration indicates that the first and second grades in three northern elementary schools are overflowing. Some students may have to be bused to other schools.

The school board also adopted a policy governing the use of the new computer networks in the schools.

Staff, parents and students will be expected to sign an “acceptable use agreement” before having network access, which will include access to the Internet, the global computer network.

, DataTimes