CdA middle school zones also on table

The Coeur d’Alene School District’s attendance zone committee isn’t quite ready to discuss changes to attendance boundaries for the district’s three middle schools.

Parents at a community forum on Thursday night weren’t at all hesitant to start the conversation, though.

Even though the forum was about a plan that would move about 700 elementary students to new schools in the fall, several parents spoke out against moving their middle school children.

Chairman Russ Hansen said the committee will look at middle school boundaries once it has handed off a proposal on elementary boundaries to the school board. Like the elementary proposal, the middle school changes would be enacted this fall.

The school board has asked the committee to help even out the populations at Canfield, Woodland and Lakes middle schools. Canfield and Woodland have about 800 students each and both have portable classrooms.

Lakes has about 600 students, Hansen said.

“It’s not an even distribution,” he said. “Lakes can handle more.”

Parent Laurie Dahl lives in the Indian Meadows area, a neighborhood whose elementary students could be transferred from Ramsey Elementary to Winton Elementary under the committee’s draft plan for the elementaries. Many children in the neighborhood have been moved before.

Dahl is worried the transfer will automatically mean her children will attend Lakes Middle School and not Woodland, which is walking distance from her home.

Lakes is too far away, in her mind. And, Dahl said, she’s heard that Lakes has a “pretty bad reputation for drugs.”

Neighbor Teresa Wolf said at Thursday’s forum that she didn’t want her child bused to Lakes.

“She walks 1.2 miles to her school,” Wolf said. “It’s a five-mile jaunt to Lakes.”

Hansen said the committee hasn’t started to discuss changes to the middle school boundaries.

He said it’s ideal to have students from a particular elementary attend the same middle school, but it isn’t always possible.

Coeur d’Alene has 11 elementaries – a number that doesn’t divide evenly by three, the number of middle schools. And the three middle schools don’t divide evenly into two high schools, he noted.

Wolf also commented on Lakes’ reputation and said there were “problems there that need to be addressed.”

“I don’t want my kid in a lockdown school,” Wolf said.

Lakes Principal Chris Hammons said comments like Wolf’s are one of the most frustrating things he has to deal with as a principal.

“She hasn’t been to the school that I know of,” Hammons said. “I think the rumor mill just spreads and if anyone were to look at test scores and discipline issues, I think we compare to any school in the district, any district in the state.”

He said the image might have something to do with the old building Lakes is in and he welcomed anyone to talk to his students to see what they think of the school.

After years on the committee, Hansen said he understands the comments – even the bad ones – parents make about possible changes.

“You’ve got a bunch of people that love their kids and are fighting for their kids,” Hansen said. “It’s normal for people to make those comments.

“I’ve made some of those comments, too,” he said.

Hansen has been involved in changes that affected his own neighborhood at least three times.

“I don’t like moving any neighborhood,” Hansen said. “I definitely don’t like moving mine, but I’ve had to do it.”