Recent enrollment projections, past elections and a 2012 court ruling all point to an upcoming shortage of space and teachers for Snoqualmie Valley schools. To be ready for at least part of the shortfall, school district staff are working on facilities plans that will need board approval by spring, and developing a streamlined teacher hiring process.
Demographer Les Kendrick’s predictions are part of the push. Earlier this year, he forecast that the district would have about 7,400 students by the year 2020, and would require a third middle school a year earlier. November’s election results and the passage of Initiative 1351 calling for reduced class sizes, could move all school districts in Washington to hire more teachers and build more facilities.
And finally, the state supreme court’s pressure on the legislature to fully fund public education, commonly called the McCleary decision, may force a solution from the legislative session starting in January.
“We are expecting a shortage of qualified teachers with the new state funding,” assistant superintendent Ryan Stokes told the school board at its Dec. 11 meeting.
He described the high-level plan for the district to speed up its mechanism for offering teachers contracts in the summer, and then went over the facilities needs, based on existing conditions and projections.
For the 2015-16 school year, he said, the middle school grades are expected to grow by 20 to 30 full-time equivalent students, but should not need to add portable classrooms. Chief Kanim Middle School could have one free classroom, and Twin Falls Middle School staff are considering converting three computer labs into classrooms, and using computers on carts to add capacity.
Three elementary schools, Fall City, Opstad and Snoqualmie, are projected to have no free classrooms next year, and may require portables. In Fall City, the addition of portables would require an expansion of the septic system.
Funding question
Also, Stokes felt that the board would need to decide on buying portables no later than March.
“We don’t anticipate the legislature to finish their session prior to July 1, which I think is too late to be able to make some significant budgetary decisions for next year,” he said. “I think we may have to make some decisions regardless of what we think is going to happen at the legislature.”
It’s probable that education funding will be one of the last issues settled by the legislature, including action on McCleary and funding for the voter-approved class-size reduction measures. Stokes said the district would not likely be able to “make very significant changes in class size reductions from a McCleary or state funding level standpoint in 15-16, nor can we probably expand very many of the full-day K offerings,” Stokes said.
Full-day Kindergarten was required by the state legislature for all school districts, by the start of the 2017-18 school year, although a funding mechanism was not included. Currently, the district received about 60 percent of its funding from the state. It offers some full-day programs, and some half-day, so Kindergarten students are counted as half of full-time equivalent students. The expansion to full-day for all Kindergartens would require significantly more classrooms, as would 1351 and McCleary, Stokes noted.
“Assuming that the state comes through with McCleary… elementary six won’t be sufficient for all of our needs for class size reduction,” he said. A seventh elementary school would be needed.
Elementary six is part of a proposed $245 million bond that school district voters will consider for the Feb. 10 special election. The proposal would build, repair or remodel buildings at all grade levels, in an eight-year phased process that would result in a sixth elementary school, a rebuilt Mount Si High School, and the conversion of the freshman campus back into a third middle school.
• Learn more about facilities and bond planning in the Snoqualmie Valley School District at http://www.svsd410.org/domain/1093.
