As a candidate for the Snoqualmie Valley School Board who has pledged to reopen Snoqualmie Middle School, I would like to respond to a letter to the editor published on August 22, 2013, asking us to come together in support of closing Snoqualmie Middle School and converting it into an isolated ninth grade campus.

The author apparently wants us to ignore the harm that this isolated ninth grade campus will inflict on more than one thousand students in our school district in order to try this risky experiment. For example, 450 middle school students from the former Snoqualmie Middle School will now be bused to schools far from their homes.

Seven hundred and fifty middle school students at Twin Falls Middle School will be forced to attend a school which is 150 students over its maximum capacity. Four hundred and sixty ninth graders will be forced to attend an isolated ninth grade campus which lacks many learning opportunities available only at the main high school campus. Twenty-seven teachers at Mount Si High School (one in three teachers at the high school) will be forced to give up a significant part of their day shuttling back and forth between the main high school and the isolated ninth grade campus.

The reason there is not a single other isolated ninth grade campus in our state is because it is a terrible idea which harms too many kids. Those of us who oppose a permanently isolated ninth grade campus want our freshman to succeed. The best way to promote their success is to return them to Mount Si High School where they will have an opportunity for four full years at a comprehensive high school.

David Spring

North Bend