Plans by the Lake Washington School District to redraw school boundaries has drawn the ire of parents whose children will be pushed out of the Lakeview School Zone under all the proposals.

LWSD is currently examining three separate options for rezoning the school boundaries in an attempt to properly accommodate student growth by placing them in schools based on capacity and expected growth in each neighborhood. Though there were originally seven scenarios considered by the school board at a Nov. 17 study session, they have been whittled down to three. The district sought public input on these three options for the Lake Washington Learning Community from Dec. 1-15.

The problem, as Lakeview and Kirkland Middle School parents see it, is that in all three scenarios their children are pushed out to Ben Franklin Elementary and Rose Hill Middle School. Meanwhile, a subsidized housing complex located across the South Kirkland Park and Ride on Northeast 38th Place is slated to be a part of Lakeview Zone.

Parents are even disputing the numbers the district is offering to justify their decision, claiming they don’t add up, such as subsidized housing complex, which is estimated to only have seven students attend Lakeview Elementary.

Bellevue resident Deanna Androski, a parent with two children in the Lakeview Zone, said she first moved into her home on the west side of I-405 a decade ago so that her children could attend Lakeview Elementary. Though they live in Bellevue, as do many of the families affected by the proposal, they are located within the LWSD.

Under any of the three proposals, Androski’s children will be pushed to the other side of Interstate 405, which she sees as essentially kicking them out of the neighborhood.

Androski, who said she volunteers up to 10 hours a week at Lakeview, said she does not understand why people who have lived in the school zone for years are being pushed out in order to make room for people who have yet to move in and have no current ties to the community.

“We don’t understand how this is logical or fair,” she said. “We’re deeply invested. The families in this neighborhood have owned the homes for a decade and we send our kids to the schools for a reason.”

Under all three options, 42 students would be moved from Lakeview to Ben Franklin. Meanwhile, under two of the three options, an additional 21 students would be moved to Ben Franklin from Benjamin Rush Elementary.

In a letter to the school board and director, Androski said they are treating the proposal as though the decision was a foregone conclusion and that it would unnecessarily divide a neighborhood.

“It is absolutely unacceptable to cut our homes out of the Lakeview zone – kids that have been established in their school – while including the apartment complex on 38th that is going to be populated with kids that do not yet have connections to a school but get a space at Lakeview while my daughter does not,” she wrote.

She added that if any residential area should be zoned into Ben Franklin, it should be the apartments.

“Leave our pocket of single family homes intact and our haven up on 113th alone,” she wrote. “We work hard for Lakeview, our kids are established there and our daughter feels safe there.”

On thepetitionsite.com, there is a petition to stop the rezoning of Lakeview with 99 signatures. In the meantime, Androski said they are weighing their legal options, as parents are accusing the district of providing vague and incomplete information as to the justification for their proposed decision.

Kathryn Reith, spokesperson for the LWSD, said the district is trying to keep as many neighborhoods together as possible, but “most of the time, any scenario we create isn’t perfect.”

“You look for, obviously, things that are on the border between two schools and see how many kids live in those areas,” she said. “So if you’ve got a small area and realize there are 150 kids in that area and you need only 25 that’s not going to work. There’s a bit of trial and error to this.”

Reith added that they have accepted further feedback from parents and will be reviewing it as they move forward.

“We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback and we’re looking at what we might do as a result,” she said. “That’s kind of where we are right now. Our next step is to go through that feedback and see what we’re hearing from parents.”

Reith stated that the district must redraw school zones after the school district bond failed to get 60 percent approval, which would have helped with overcrowding in schools. In October, the district sought input on a plan to redirect funds that would go, among other things, towards installing one portable at Franklin Elementary, 10 portables at Lake Washington High School, and modifications to Juanita High School creating offices for teachers during their planning periods.

“If we’re not building schools how can we most efficiently use that space now and where can we add space through portable classrooms or additions to schools with the small budget we have?” she said. “Right now we theoretically have more students in our schools than the space we have available, but our principals are very resourceful and figuring out ways to put students there.”

The redrawn boundaries, she said, are intended to relieve congested schools and move students into ones which are not at full capacity yet.

“Since we do have some schools with a little space available and we have room to add classrooms, it’s not where we necessarily have the need,” she said. “So you have to change neighborhood school boundaries to move students to fill the space where we have it to relieve the schools with more students than they accommodate.”

Eric Synn, another parent of two Lakeview students, wrote in a letter distributed to his neighborhood that the district plan doesn’t take into account the 91 Quest Program students at Ben Franklin, while  school estimates do. Furthermore, he wrote, Ben Franklin is already at overcapacity with the Quest students.

The district documents describing the three scenarios state at the bottom that the enrollment and capacity numbers exclude those 91 students at Ben Franklin.

Synn’s letter also challenged the estimate of seven students from the new apartment complexes, nor does it include any active Citizen Amendment Requests to change properties zoned for residential to industrial.

“The data also shows that the student population will be decreasing in the coming years even with all these housing units completed,” he wrote. “How is this accurate?”

Reith told the Reporter that the district can’t take into account properties that have yet to be developed unless they have applied for a permit from the city, and even then it is dependent on how long construction is expected to take.

“We don’t plan for specific enrollment projections involving parcels of land in which there is no specific projects planned,” she said. “We talked to developers and asked ‘What’s the time frame for those  projects?’ You may have a permit issued for a number of years out. All those things can impact when we anticipate kids moving in and coming to our schools.”

As for the number of students expected from the apartment complex, Reith said the numbers come from similar housing complexes in the district.

“Multi-family housing doesn’t generate as many kids as people think it would,” she said. “We base it off of experience. We understand that particular location may generate more kids, but we have to operate on what’s our historic experience.”

Parents have also complained that certain schools, such as Peter Kirk Elementary, are not seeing any changes under any of the three scenarios despite being in overcapacity.

Reith claims Kirk has a stable population and is projected to remain that way.

“We’re not going to affect Kirk unless it could help another school,” she said.

Still, parents like Synn are not satisfied with the way in which the district worked out the scenarios.

“There’s been no rhyme or reason to the actual process being used,” he told the Reporter. “There’re been no reason to the final three outcome,” he said. “I feel that the process, what it did is placated some people, pretended to show that workflow is going on. Deals were being made behind closed doors.”

Even then, what bothers some parents isn’t the actual decision to move their kids, but the initial claims that they would not.

Sandra Andrews claims that at initial meetings one school board member gave the impression that natural boundaries for the school zones would be preserved and that the only area that would be affected would be the northern part of the district in the Everest neighborhood. When opposition arose to the idea, Andrews claims, the district looked at neighborhoods in Lakeview.

Reith stated that this was a PTSA meeting in which a school board member had been invited to speak just as the boundary committee had started to meet.

“There are different interpretations of what was said there,” she said. “Anything said there was not said on behalf of the committee or with knowledge of what the committee was doing. There was confusion caused by the meeting.”

Like Adroski, Andrews is upset that those who’ve helped support their local schools are being forced to send their students out to another area while new residents with no prior ties will be able to attend.

“You’ve got people who haven’t joined the neighborhood and community that will essentially move here when the developments open up,” she said. “Their kids will get to go to it. Meanwhile parents who invested in the schools and whose kids went there won’t be.”

Another loss for children, Andrews added, is that currently they have access to the Kirkland Corridor Trail, which their students can use to get to school. If they are sent to Ben Franklin and Rose Hill Middle School, however, they will be forced to drive them rather than allow them to bike or walk.

“I think the part that is so frustrating is that when you dive into the logic here I’m not necessarily sure they’re solving the problems,” she said. “I think they’re creating a new set of problems. I don’t think they will truly know anything until they get their enrollment numbers next year. It

is scary that we’re in this situation, and it’s so sad the school district had such potential. It shows such a failure of leadership where you did not plan well enough.”

Kreg Kendall, a Lakeview student parent who works in real estate, said the new school zone boundaries will also have a negative impact on the property value of their homes, since parents will now have to send their kids across I-405.

“I respect the challenges that they have at the district,” he said. “I’m not trying to come down hard on them. The funding thing is a drag now. I respect that. But if you’re going to do something, take the kids who are new. They’re the ones who should be hopping on the bus because they don’t have any roots established.”

Kendall also expressed frustration with the district’s process and requests for clarification have only confused them further.

“We ended up with more questions than answers,” he said.

As Andrews sees it, their treatment at the hands of the district sends the wrong message to parents.

“There’s a real reason why the bonds aren’t passing,” she said.

According to Reith, the boundary committee will have another comment period Jan. 13-14 to narrow the choices down to two scenarios for each learning community and that the scenarios may be different from the ones currently proposed.

After seeking public input on the boundary process in September, the district received over 5,000 responses from parents, with the top ranked criteria  being maintaining neighborhoods to the extent possible and minimizing the number of students and families affected.

All information from the district on the boundary process can be found at http://www.lwsd.org/News/Reboundary/Pages/default.aspx.