Woodway Elementary school will close starting in fall 2009, and Terrace Park K-8 seventh and eighth graders, about 100 students, will move to Brier Terrace Middle School.
The Edmonds School Board approved the changes at their meeting Tuesday night, Dec. 16.
A decision on closing Evergreen Elementary was delayed until March.
The delay is because of an error by the Everett Herald newspaper, which failed to print public hearing notices officials sent them on the school’s closure, said Nick Brossoit, Edmonds superintendent.
“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.”
Law says districts must publish hearings about school closures, then wait a specified time before voting on them. The board will hold hearings on Evergreen at its January regular meetings.
The original goal of moving Terrace Park K-8 students 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 building.
“It isn’t anything we want to do,” said board president Susan Paine of the Woodway closure. “A little neighborhood school is what everybody hopes for.”
Tuesday night, board members also approved a new program for gifted middle school students to be created at Brier Terrace Middle School starting in fall 2009.
Board member Ann McMurray said it was regretful to have to close Woodway Elementary but that 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 Elementary and Westgate Elementary – 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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