Student population shifts

This spring, Coeur d’Alene school officials were talking about building a new school to replace the aging Lakes Middle School. Building from scratch was looking more affordable than remodeling the half-century-old school.

Now, with construction costs rising, neither option looks as affordable as it did this spring. Estimates to remodel or rebuild the school – even downsizing from previous plans – are more than the district had budgeted in supplemental levy funds.

At the same time, the district says the schools in the southern end of the district that feed into Lakes – and the middle school population – are shrinking. Fewer students are enrolling at Borah, Bryan, Fernan, Sorensen and Winton elementaries. Meanwhile, growth on the north end of the district, and on the west side near Atlas Road, is increasing the population at the northern schools.

The school board, district administrators, teachers, principals and parents met Monday evening to discuss the future of Coeur d’Alene’s smallest schools.

As of Friday, the southern elementary schools had 1,746 students and the northern schools had 2,442 students – almost 700 more. And that’s after the district transferred students from school to school in an attempt to even out the populations, Superintendent Harry Amend said. Since 1998, the gap between populations in the northern and southern schools has widened.

Canfield and Woodland middle schools each have more than 800 students. Lakes has less than 600.

The district’s newest elementary, Skyway, already has two doublewide portables for extra class space, Amend said, and four major housing developments are planned for that area. Some of the southern schools have empty classrooms.

Originally, the district’s Long Range Planning Committee was planning to remodel the southern elementary schools with money from the next School Plant Facilities Levy the district asks voters to consider. One of the ideas floated Monday was to reconsider those plans.

The district’s Long Range Planning and Attendance Zone committees, which include parents, community members and board members, have separately been discussing the enrollment trends for some time. Board Chairwoman Wanda Quinn said it was important for the committees to ask the hard questions and consider the difficult options.

“To remodel downtown schools that we can’t fill is not necessarily fair to our taxpayers,” she said.

But architect Mike Patano said the district could be a catalyst in bringing more people to the southern area by investing in the schools. Even though the population on the prairie is growing fast, Patano said, it’s “not endless,” and he noted that plans to revitalize downtown and midtown could have an impact on the southern population.

Russ Hansen, a parent representative on both committees, said he’d hate to see the district abandon plans to remodel the smaller schools, or to decrease the size of Lakes or scale back the remodel. He suggested the district go back to the voters and ask for more money.

“I’d rather my tax money were spent doing the project right,” Hansen said.

Amend said some solutions that had been discussed include changing elementaries in the southern part of the district from grades K-5 to K-6 and changing Lakes into a junior high rather than a middle school. Then, Amend said, all the schools in the south would be smaller.

He said research has shown smaller schools improve student achievement, especially for at-risk students. The southern schools have higher populations of poor students.

Amend said it was also suggested that the district turn one or two of the southern schools into magnet schools, or specialty schools, to draw in more students.

The district could also look at combining grade levels, he said, having a kindergarten center similar to Post Falls’ at one school, grades 2-3 at another and grades 4-5 at yet another school.

Housing a particular program at a school could also boost enrollment, he said. Fernan Elementary has an extra 120 students because the preschool for students with disabilities and a Life Skills program for disabled students run out of the school.

Nontraditional attendance zones were also suggested, or taking one neighborhood from the north side and busing all those students to a southern school. The district already buses students from the Canfield and Thomas Lane areas to Bryan Elementary.

“You could repopulate by doing that,” Amend said. “Pick a neighborhood with the right number of kids and presto-chango!”

But Amend said that’s not a popular move.

The district could always opt to leave the elementaries as is and go ahead with the Lakes project as planned, he said.

“It’s unanimous in the research we’ve been able to find,” he said. “In general, smaller neighborhood schools provide great student achievement, especially for at-risk students.”

Both committees will meet next week to continue discussions, and in October, the district has planned another work session with the board and committee members.

“Our hope is to open Lakes in the fall of 2006,” Amend said. “That’s why it’s timely right now.”