Little choice on school closures

Published 9:48 pm Wednesday, October 1, 2008

LYNNWOOD — Enrollment is dropping. Salaries are rising. Budgets are shrinking.

To save money, Woodway Elementary School in Edmonds must close — and, chances are, it will next fall. Evergreen Elementary School in Mountlake Terrace also may close.

That’s the message Edmonds School District administrators gave parents at a public hearing about Woodway Elementary on Tuesday night.

“I’ve been on the board for five years — and little did I know when I got on the board that every single year I’d have to approve budget cuts,” school board member Gary Noble said. “It hasn’t been fun. … It has not been a light decision at all to investigate these closures, but it is certainly a way to save $1.5 million.”

Several parents questioned the board about the closure and expressed disappointment. Most seemed resigned to the idea that Woodway, the smallest school in the district, will close.

Susan Tschohl has lived in the area for years and has watched several neighborhood schools close. She wishes her fifth-grade daughter could finish her elementary years at Woodway.

“It deeply saddens me,” she told the board. “My child has one more year to go and she’s already resigned herself to the fact that she’s not going to Woodway, and I think that’s very sad. I think that there are other avenues that should have been considered, and I don’t think they ever were.”

The Edmonds School District pays $1,063 per student to operate Woodway Elementary School, which has around 200 students, according to district figures. That’s more than double the cost per student at many of the district’s larger elementary schools. At Martha Lake Elementary, for example, the district pays $398 per student. About 600 students attend Martha Lake.

Smaller schools are more expensive because they generally need the same number of administrators as bigger schools and building costs are spread among fewer students, Assistant Superintendent Marla Miller said.

District officials are still trying to decide where Woodway students would go next year. Most would likely be sent to neighboring schools, including Sherwood Elementary and Westgate Elementary, Assistant Superintendent Ellen Kahan said. A special-education program that draws students from several schools would be moved to a centrally located school, as would a kindergarten program at Woodway for children with special needs, Kahan said.

A few parents said they didn’t think the district has done a good job informing parents about the closure. Rumors have circulated for years, but concrete information has been hard to come by, Woodway mom Nancy Byers said.

“One of the reasons enrollment is down is because of the rumors,” she said. “Parents don’t want to put their child in a school they think they’re going to be moved from.”

Several parents said they thought more would have attended the hearing if the district had used its phone system to leave voice-mail messages with families. About 25 people were at the hearing Tuesday at district headquarters in Lynnwood.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the school closures Dec. 16.

District officials hope to have updated plans at a public hearing Nov. 12 about where students would go should Woodway close. A hearing about the plan to close Evergreen Elementary is scheduled for 6 p.m. Oct. 14. Both meetings will be at the Edmonds School District office in Lynnwood.

“We will be losing one of our most diverse schools, and that is a huge loss for our whole district,” said school board president Susan Paine, who lives near Woodway. “We are being very thoughtful with this.”

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.

Public hearings

The Edmonds School Board has scheduled three more public hearings to discuss possible school closings because of declining enrollment. A second hearing about Woodway Elementary is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 12. Hearings about Evergreen Elementary are scheduled for 6 p.m. on Oct. 14 and Dec. 9.

The hearings are at the Edmonds School District office, 20420 68th Ave. W. in Lynnwood.