The Spokane School District is now taking applications for a committee that will study how to change school boundaries. The district is building three new middle schools during the next few years and must decide from where their students will come.
Associate Superintendent Mark Anderson says a citizens’ group will do the work of determining the catchment areas for the new schools.
“They’ll start in January. It’ll take them about a year to come up with some drafts, then we’ll have several community engagements on the drafts they come up with. The goal is by June of ’21, a year before we move students up, we’ll have the new boundaries set," Anderson said.
He says the group will also tweak the boundary lines for some elementary and high schools to keep grade school classmates together in middle school if possible.
He says parents and other interested people can go to the school district’s website and apply to be part of the group. The deadline is the end of October. Anderson says boundary committee members must live within the school district. He says the district will strive for geographic balance. Some of the committee members will be chosen from the applicants and some, Anderson says, will be picked by lottery.
“We haven’t done this for probably 40 years in Spokane, so it will be an important process that communities feel they were involved," Anderson said.
He says the school board has approved some rules to guide the new committee in considering boundary changes.
The new middle schools will be located near Albi Stadium, in the foothills area in northeast Spokane and on the South Hill.