EDMONDS — Woodway Elementary School in Edmonds will close next fall, and about 100 seventh- and eighth-graders at Terrace Park School in Mountlake Terrace will move to Brier Terrace Middle School.
The Edmonds School Board approved the changes at this week’s meeting.
A decision on closing Evergreen Elementary School in Mountlake Terrace was delayed until March because a public hearing notice wasn’t printed on time, said Edmonds superintendent Nick Brossoit.
“We don’t want to prolong this, because it’s agonizing,” he said of the delay. “But we have to make sure we do this legally.”
Districts must publish notices about hearings on school closures, then wait a specified time before voting on them, according to state law. The board will hold hearings about Evergreen at its January regular meetings.
The original goal of moving students from Terrace Park School, which has students from kindergarten to eighth grade, was to make room for Evergreen students should the school close.
Low enrollment at Evergreen and Woodway and the district’s budget problems prompted officials to begin looking at closures last year. Last spring, officials cut about $3.3 million from the district’s budget. Closing Woodway and Evergreen is estimated to save about $1.4 million a year, about $722,000 a year from each school.
“It isn’t anything we want to do,” board president Susan Paine said of the Woodway closure. “A little neighborhood school is what everybody hopes for.”
On Tuesday night, board members also approved the creation of a new gifted program for middle school students at Brier Terrace Middle School starting in fall 2009.
Board member Ann McMurray said it was regrettable to have to close Woodway Elementary, but the creation of the gifted program for middle school students was much needed.
The program will run using existing funds, officials said.
Next year, Woodway students will go to Sherwood and Westgate elementary schools; 100 percent of the classrooms are expected to be used in both those schools.
New bus routes will be developed during the summer.
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