NTPS board adopts elementary school boundary changes with 1 key difference
.jpg "Assistant Superintendent of Operations Troy Oliver (far left) explains elementary school boundary recommendations to the North Thurston Public Schools board at Olympic View Elementary on Tuesday.")
The North Thurston Public Schools board voted unanimously to adopt new boundary recommendations for its elementary schools, but not before making a change to one of them.
One of the recommendations would shift students among three schools, and was approved without comment. A second recommendation regarding transfer students was not accepted quite so easily. The board finally suggested changes to it and voted to approve.
The goal of the moves is to balance out enrollment size at a number of elementary schools in the district. As development and growth has shifted to the northeast in the Lacey area, schools such as Pleasant Glade and Meadows have grown, while schools in the southeast area of Lacey have become smaller.
Meadows Elementary, which is east of the Regional Athletic Complex, is the largest elementary school in the district with 654 students. The school is in need of classroom space, plus its pick-up and drop-off location is congested with traffic, Assistant Superintendent of Operations Troy Oliver said.
“The pressure on that building is immediate,” he said.
One of the recommendations the board adopted was to shift some students from north to south, moving some students from Pleasant Glade, east of Sleater Kinney Road Northeast, to Mountain View Elementary on College Street, and shifting some Mountain View students to Horizons Elementary, which is near the Horizon Pointe neighborhood off Rainier Road. That recommendation was accepted without comment.
But the second recommendation sought to eliminate all transfers of non-resident students into Meadows and to eliminate all new transfers to Olympic View, Pleasant Glade and South Bay elementaries.
Board members were resistant to the idea of eliminating all transfers to Meadows.
“The hard line for Meadows is uncomfortable,” board President Gretchen Maliska said. “We’re really struggling with that as a board.”
Board member Jennifer Thomas agreed, asking whether transfers to Meadows could be looked at on a case-by-case basis.
Assistant Superintendent Oliver replied that every family can make a compelling case for why they need to transfer. The challenge is trying to draw a line that feels fair to everyone. “That’s nearly impossible,” he said.
The board also wanted to know what makes Meadows so popular with transfer students. The school currently has about 50 students on waivers, according to data shared during the meeting.
Oliver said the school accepts a lot of transfers, but it also has a preschool program that attracts families from the area who then decide they would rather stay at the elementary school than go back to their home school.
In the end, the board said “no” to eliminating all transfers to Meadows. Instead, they asked that Meadows be grouped with Olympic View, Pleasant Glade and South Bay, which will now not allow new transfers in and will phase out existing transfers over time as those students graduate and move on to middle school.
The district will review the policy in two to three years, district spokeswoman Amy Blondin said.
The work begins now to prepare for implementing the policies in the fall, she said.
This story was originally published May 3, 2023 at 10:45 AM with the headline "NTPS board adopts elementary school boundary changes with 1 key difference."
