New school district considered

If voters in the Central Valley School District don’t approve a $55.2 million bond in the fall to build two new schools, a group of citizens in Liberty Lake will be ready to take action.

Citizens for Liberty Lake Schools, a nonprofit organization created in May, is laying the groundwork to break away from Central Valley if the proposed bond issue fails.

If that happens, the group believes it can drum up enough support from Liberty Lake residents to create a Greater Liberty Lake School District. It would need to collect the signatures of 50 percent plus one of the registered voters living in the proposed new district to begin the process.

But the petition may not go any further.

According to the Washington State Board of Education, creating a new school district is not legally possible at this point.

“They can do whatever they want in the way of gathering signatures for a petition, but if what they want leads to the creation of a new school district, our understanding is that the law does not allow it,” said Larry Davis, the executive director of the state board. “There simply is no mechanism for it.”

The group would need to change the statute addressing school boundary changes and transfer of school district territory by finding a local legislator willing to sponsor a bill.

“They are following a process based on the public’s interest in making a change; there is nothing wrong with that. But that does not affect the law,” said Kate Lykins Brown, a communications and legislative affairs manager with the state board.

An interpretation of state law was written in 1993 by an assistant attorney general stating that a new school district could not be formed by the extraction of territory from an already existing school district.

The law was rewritten in 1999, and the original bill included language that would have authorized citizens to create a new school district by partition of territory from a single existing district, Davis said.

“But once legislators understood that the language could lead to a whole bunch of districts big and small being carved up, they took it out of the bill,” Davis said. “This, to me, is a clear indication that they respect the findings in the 1993 … opinion.” The 1993 finding has never been challenged, he said.

“That’s just one man’s opinion,” argued Dale Stevens, an organizer of the Liberty Lake group.

Stevens said the law is ambiguous, and an interpretation of the 1999 version of the law should be considered.

“But if in fact we do have to go through the legislative system to have the law changed, we believe that we would have the legislative support we need,” Stevens said.

Once enough signatures have been gathered for the petition, Stevens said it will be turned over to Educational Service District 101, and the district will decide how to proceed.

The nonprofit group was formed by a group of parents and citizens concerned about the rate of growth in Liberty Lake and Central Valley’s efforts to support it.

Last month, Central Valley voted to take the proposed bond issue before voters in November to build a new middle school in Liberty Lake and a new elementary school to serve students in the northeast part of the district’s boundaries.

Growth in that area has caused schools like Liberty Lake and Greenacres Elementary to surge beyond capacity, while schools in the western half of the district remain slightly under capacity. Liberty Lake, which was built for 650 students, will have more than 800 students in the fall. Portables will be placed at both schools this summer.

The Liberty Lake parents involved in the effort to separate from Central Valley are concerned that if the bond doesn’t pass, that would mean their children would eventually be bused to schools in the other parts of the current district.

The proposed site for a new elementary school is at Mission Avenue and Long Road, which is not in Liberty Lake. A developer has offered the district another site just east of that site, at Mission and Holl Road, but no agreement has been met.

“Liberty Lake has a strong sense of community and believes it is in the best interests of the community to keep its students housed in schools in Liberty Lake, not bussed to other portions of the current CVSD,” parent Randy Grinalds wrote in a press release issued by Citizens for Liberty Lake Schools. “While the most recent efforts by CVSD through their planned $55.2 million bond proposal will address some of the overcrowding issues … its approval by 60 percent of the voters … is not guaranteed.”

The group has also hired a retired school district superintendent to help map out what a new district would look like. Grinalds refused to name that person.

“We are very much committed to helping Central Valley get the bond passed; it’s what needs to be done,” Stevens said. “But we also have to be prepared for alternatives in the event that the bond does not pass.”