School Taking Steps To Ease Overcrowding Adams Elementary Changing Boundaries

About 85 Adams Elementary students will be sent to neighboring elementary schools next fall as Spokane School District officials try to ease overcrowding at the South Side school.

Nearly 60 students will be sent to Hamblen Elementary. Another 20 will go to Mullan Road Elementary and six or seven students will attend Lincoln Heights.

“Boundary changes are really the last resort,” Projects Director Ned Hammond told concerned Adams parents at a meeting Tuesday. “We don’t like to do them. We know it’s disruptive.”

Adams is the only district school facing adjusted boundaries next year.

About 560 students are packed into classrooms and six portables lined up behind the school, with more likely on the way.

The school has about 60 kids in each grade 4 through 6. But there are 90 kids in each grade level from kindergarten through third grade.

A 60-unit apartment complex going up behind the school and population growth in the Adams attendance area could bring even more kids to the school in the next few years, said Principal Pat Lynass.

“We’re just bursting at the seams here,” she said.

Students between 25th and 29th, Southeast Boulevard and Ray will be bused to Lincoln Heights. Kids in a slice of land from the Palouse Highway to Regal to 57th will catch buses to Mullan Road.

But most kids between Mt. Vernon and Cook from 29th to 44th - some just a few blocks from Adams - will have to walk or be driven by parents nearly a mile to Hamblen.

“That’s a lot of driving and a lot of time there that I don’t have,” said one parent. “That’s why I’m so mad.”

The district provides buses for students living at least one radius mile from school.

Parents worry about students walking the distance along busy 37th Avenue. Much of the Hamblen area has no sidewalks.

“I’m not letting my child walk and there is no bus, so what am I supposed to do?” asked one exasperated mom.

For students moving to Mullan Road, the switch will mean they’ll attend Sacajawea Middle School instead of Chase, where Adams students go.

Kids going to Lincoln Heights and Hamblen will attend Chase.

Some families say they’re excited for the change.

Hamblen is just five years old. Adams was built in 1909.

“I don’t think the kids will have a problem,” said Chris Dogas, whose third grade daughter Maria will move to Hamblen next fall. “It’s like driving a used car and trading it in for a new one.”