The Everett School District is proposing a seventh elementary school for its growing south end, the greater Mill Creek area.
By 2009, enrollment in the six south Everett elementary schools could be 421 students over capacity, said Mike Dunn, the district’s facilities and planning director.
The district looked for an architect this week to begin the yearlong design and planning process. A bond issue could go before voters in 2006.
School leaders propose a 530-student elementary school similar to others in the area, at a cost of about $15 million, Dunn said.
Space is available at the Gateway Middle School site for an elementary school, but school leaders say they would need Snohomish County’s approval to extend 156th Street SE to the site to make it work.
In all, enrollment in the district’s south end is expected to rise by 472 students by 2009.
New housing projects along 35th Avenue SE and Bothell-Everett Highway are driving the growth. However, undeveloped areas of south Mill Creek also could see development, Dunn said. The south end is the only place where the district is expected to grow in the next five years.
Elementary schools in the north end, including downtown Everett, are expected to fall by 57 students during that time. Schools in the central part of the district are expected to see 164 fewer students by 2009.
The north end has fared the worst in recent years, with enrollment at the four elementary schools in the area falling by 17 percent over five years to 1,811 in fall 2003, according to numbers filed with the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The losses mean lots of elbowroom. Hawthorne Elementary, for example, is 169 students under its capacity of 611, a gap expected to grow to 197 students by 2009.
But neighborhoods change, and the north end should not be underestimated, Everett School Board President Roy Yates said.
“While it’s the older, more established part of our community, these things have a way of changing over time,” he said, pointing to his own experience. “My wife and I raised our three kids in the north end of Everett. In five to six years, we may not be there anymore. We see younger families moving in.”
Everett voters in 2002 approved a $74 million bond for improved technology and renovations and modernization of several schools. A six-classroom addition to Penny Creek Elementary School in the south end was part of that work.
Additions could take care of the south end’s immediate growth, by adding six classrooms to three schools, probably Cedar Wood, Mill Creek and Silver Firs.
But Dunn said a new school would be better. Adding more students to a school puts pressure on central facilities such as cafeterias, libraries and offices.
“What we’re going to do now is study the situation in greater detail,” Yates said.
Questions include whether the county will allow the extension of 156th Street, whether neighbors will be receptive to a second school and whether another school would fit well on the site, he said.
The school district bought the Gateway site about 15 years ago with the idea that an elementary school would be built there in addition to the middle school.
But it is less than a mile from Silver Firs Elementary School, and enrollment at that school is expected to remain flat for the next five years.
Melissa Slager is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
