Parents Question School Boundary Changes

About 30 parents spent Tuesday evening questioning proposed changes in the attendance boundaries for Liberty Lake Elementary School.

Their stories included tales of students who’ve been shifted year after year, concerns that the new boundaries will be no more lasting than this year’s lines were, and worries about an impassable road.

After the hearing, boundary review committee chairwoman Lynn Trantow said the committee would consider several points brought up during the evening.

The boundaries are being shifted to reduce Liberty Lake’s enrollment of 600 students to about 460. Greenacres Elementary School, which currently has three empty classrooms, is expected to move from this year’s enrollment of 456 to 521 students. Progress Elementary School is expected to move from 322 students this year to 375.

One area affected by the proposed change is bounded by Flora Road, Mission Avenue, Barker Road and the Spokane River. The other, larger area affected is roughly between Liberty Lake Drive and Harvard Road on the eastern side and a western side that zigzags from Henry Road up to Barker Road.

Lee Nilson, whose children at Greenacres Elementary School will not be affected by the new boundaries, questioned the wisdom of including so many new developments within Greenacres’s attendance areas.

He ticked off Turtle Creek, Turtle Creek South and Riverwalk. Those developments will eventually include more than 500 houses.

“We feel that with the proposed boundaries, the boundary problems haven’t been solved,” Nilson said. “They’ve just been shifted from Liberty Lake to Greenacres.”

Some parents said they weren’t wild about having their children moved to Liberty Lake this year, because they feared another move next year.

Jan Howard has two children, a fifth-grader and a second-grader.

Alex, her younger son, will undergo his fourth transfer next year, if the proposed changes go through, Howard said. He attended kindergarten at Greenacres; a pre-first grade class called Step Up at Keystone Elementary School; first grade at Greenacres; second grade, this year, at Liberty Lake. And next year, he’ll move back to Greenacres.

“I spent a year preparing my son for the move to Liberty Lake,” Howard said. “He cried every time he heard the name.”

Yet by now and for the first time in his life, the boy has a group of school friends - friends that he’ll be torn away from next year, Howard said.

She also told of how the Greenacres school bus goes right by her son’s bus stop from last year, but cannot stop.

Howard said she could not opt to put her son into Greenacres because, as a physical therapist for East Valley School District, she must be at work during the early morning hours that her son needs transportation.

Trantow reminded the audience that the committee members are all parents, and that children are resilient.

“My kids have been resilient enough,” Howard said.

HEARING Second chance A second hearing on proposed changes in school attendance boundaries affecting Liberty Lake, Greenacres and Progress elementary schools will be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Liberty Lake Elementary, 23606 E. Boone.