Parents Ask Board To End School Busing District 81 Petitioned To Return Tiffany To Woodridge Elementary School

Angry parents pleaded with school board members Wednesday night to put Tiffany Cook back in Woodridge Elementary School and end busing for all Spokane students.

Tiffany, 10, gave up a weeklong fight to attend the Indian Trail neighborhood school Friday, after administrators told her they’d seek legal action if she returned.

But her mother and a handful of other parents took the issue - and petitions seeking to keep Tiffany at Woodridge - to Spokane District 81 board members.

“This is the welcome she’s had to this fine city, and I’m appalled,” said Cathy Womack, who has children in two Spokane schools. “This is not a monarchy here, and we are not your subjects.”

James Smith, a neighbor of the Cooks, said district administrators should’ve handled the situation more professionally and treated the Cooks, a military family who moved here last month, with more respect.

“I don’t believe it should’ve gone this far,” Smith said. “Put the little girl back in the school where she belongs.”

Tiffany’s parents were warned about crowded classes when they enrolled her in Woodridge in late August. Two weeks after school started, administrators announced plans to bus Tiffany and four other sixth-graders to Browne Elementary, about four miles away.

“It’s a decision we make as a last resort,” Superintendent Gary Livingston told the parents Wednesday. “Our problem is kids don’t come back in groups of 25 like they left (in June). Every fall, we find a shift.”

Hiring new teachers for small groups of overflow kids would be too expensive, he said.

Administrators hurt along with everyone else when kids have to move from their neighborhood schools, said board member Christie Querna. “It’s a bit myopic to suggest that administrators who have to make these decisions do so without losing sleep over it.”

Nancy Fike, board president, said she’s heard emotional pleas from many of the 38 families whose children were bused this year.

“I’m still struggling with it, because I’m still getting calls daily,” she said. The audience applauded.

But any changes would mean tradeoffs, Fike said. More money for additional teachers would mean cuts elsewhere.

The board discussed the busing issue at length Wednesday night but took no action.

Tiffany has been out of school since Friday, when she left Woodridge in tears.

The family rejected a District 81 offer to enroll her in a new magnet school for gifted children at Libby Center. The only empty seat in the east Spokane school was in fifth grade, and Tiffany felt out of place, said her mother, Tammy Cook.

This morning, she’ll don a uniform and start her first day at Assumption School, a Catholic school in Indian Trail. It’s Tiffany’s first private school.

“She’s going to be with neighborhood kids,” Tammy Cook said, “just like she wanted to be.”

, DataTimes