MUKILTEO — Enrollment in the Mukilteo School District eclipsed 15,000 for the first time this fall.
It is a sign of the times: The growth has led to construction of a new elementary school to open next September and the need to change attendance boundaries.
Forecasters had been following rising birth rates within the district and expected some increase in the total headcount.
What was harder to gauge was how much of an impact new high-density apartments would have in the east end of the school district. Developers built them and families moved in in droves.
The district now uses 67 portables at its elementary schools.
“Enrollment is as high as it has ever been,” said Debra Fulton, the district’s director of support services. “We see the district continuing to grow at all levels.”
In the past 10 years, the district has added about a thousand students and, under some growth projections, could add another 800 by 2020.
That has meant a need for new schools. The district in 2014 made its case to voters, who approved a $119 million construction bond measure to accommodate growth and renovate existing buildings.
Now, with a new $37 million Lake Stickney Elementary School scheduled to open in the fall, a team of parents, school employees and district officials is redrawing attendance boundaries. Their work could affect roughly 1,000 students from eight of the district’s 11 elementary schools. Not affected are Columbia, Mukilteo and Endeavour elementary schools.
The committee, which took testimony from parents earlier this month, is expected to decide on its final recommendations Tuesday and forward its proposal to the school board for public comment at 6 p.m. Dec. 14 at the district office, 9401 Sharon Drive, Everett. It could vote on the boundary changes Jan. 11. To learn more about the boundary proposals, go to mukilteo.wednet.edu.
The new Lake Stickney Elementary School is being built on the site of the old school, which closed in 2003 when Odyssey Elementary School opened. The district held onto the land in anticipation of future growth.
In 2017, the district expects to open a new kindergarten center alongside the Fairmount Elementary School campus.
It is part of a strategy to offer all-day kindergarten across the school district by sending several hundred students at crowded schools to the one-year program.
Enrollment for the new kindergarten center will be determined by space needs at elementary schools each year. Some students will attend the kindergarten center while others could remain at their home school.
“We don’t want to throw 5-year-olds into a gigantic school,” said Andy Muntz, a school district spokesman. “It will be broken into smaller sections with separate playgrounds. They will feel they are in a much smaller school.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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