Mead may redraw school boundaries

The Mead School District Board of Directors will hear a final recommendation tonight on proposed attendance boundaries that may affect as many as 1,500 students.

After considering public comment, the Citizens’ Boundary Review Committee is expected to map out new boundaries for the district’s secondary and elementary schools, which will go into effect in the fall of 2007.

Those changes include preparation for the construction of a new elementary school on the Five Mile Prairie. The district is also looking at shifting about 300 students from Mead High School to Mt. Spokane to help alleviate a burgeoning population.

“It’s not a task that school districts like to take on because it’s controversial in nature,” said Superintendent Al Swanson. “But nonetheless, there are problems that have to be addressed.”

The construction of hundreds of new homes on the Five Mile Prairie and west of Highway 395 near Hatch Road in the past several years has caused enrollment in some district schools to surge past capacity. Midway and Evergreen elementaries both have more than 700 students. Each should house about 600, school district officials said.

Mead has about 1,600 students, with room for about 1,500 comfortably. Mt. Spokane has about 1,200.

“We can barely get all of our students in the gymnasium for an assembly,” said Mead Principal Bruce Olgard. “There are issues with the cafeteria and with regard to the density of students moving through the halls.” Teachers have given up preparation periods so classes can be taught in their rooms.

Using information provided by the Spokane County Graphic Information System, the district determined that with the current rate of growth, Mead High School could swell to nearly 2,000 students by 2014, while Mt. Spokane will continue to see only a slight increase in its student population.

In the past three years, the district has also removed about 250 nonresident students from its schools, turning away all “choice” students who wish to attend Mead schools but don’t live in the district, Swanson said.

Voters also approved a $37.7 million capital bond to build an eighth elementary school and rebuild Mead Middle School.

A boundary review committee was formed in October and has been meeting once a week to determine which students would go to that school and determine new boundaries for others.

“They have done an outstanding job to try to come up with a plan that addresses their charge of equitably distributing our student population,” Swanson said.

After initial plans for new attendance boundaries were revealed two weeks ago, many parents came forward with criticism.

“I purchased my house in this area to make sure my children will attend Mead High School,” said parent Don Brand.

Brand has four children, two of whom will graduate from Mead in the next two years, and one who will be a freshman this fall.

Under the initial proposal, Brand’s freshman son would have been required to move to Mt. Spokane as a sophomore.

His youngest child is still in elementary school. The two oldest will graduate from Mead by 2007.

“I think it’s a travesty that two of my kids would graduate from (Mead), and then I would have to turn around and send the two others to the main rival school (Mt. Spokane). It isn’t right,” Brand said.

After hearing parent comments like Brand’s, the committee decided to allow students affected by the changes in grades nine through 10 at Mead to stay there until graduation, Swanson said. Siblings would also be grandfathered in and allowed to stay to make the transition easier.

Initially only juniors and seniors would have been allowed to stay in 2007 and would have been required to provide their own transportation.

“Based on comments it was just too problematic,” Swanson said.

It’s unclear whether the district will commit to providing transportation under the new proposal, Swanson said.

Incoming eighth-graders will also have the option of continuing at their current schools if they are impacted in 2007.

“So they do not have to have four school changes in four years,” Swanson said.