Whenever a new school is built, existing attendance boundaries must be revised to relieve existing overcrowding and create the new school's student body.

With two new elementary schools scheduled to open in the next two years, an Elementary Advisory Boundary Task Force of parents/guardians, community members and staff met this school year to review and propose changes to the district's current elementary attendance boundaries. The task force presented four proposals for new elementary school boundaries to the School Board on April 5.

Opening two state-of-the-art elementary schools is an exciting opportunity for students and staff. This will ease overcrowding in elementary schools where we currently have several portable classrooms and help address challenges for classroom space and space during lunch, gym/recess, assemblies, pick-up and drop-off of students, and meetings with families.

Bellingham is a fast-growing community and opening the new schools will help address growth in student enrollment. The proposals help balance current elementary enrollment and projected growth with the facility size at each school. Each proposal takes socio-economic diversity into account, but it is not possible to entirely equalize these demographics and maintain neighborhood schools without bussing students from one end of the district to another.

While opening new schools and easing overcrowding is necessary, we recognize it is challenging for some families who live in certain areas. The task force has taken this into strong consideration in developing the four proposals.
 
New elementary boundaries would go into effect for Carl Cozier, Geneva, Happy Valley, Larrabee, Lowell and Silver Beach in fall 2008 when the Yew Street Road school opens and fall 2009 for Alderwood, Birchwood, Northern Heights, and Sunnyland when the Aldrich Road school opens. Attendance boundaries for Columbia, Parkview and Roosevelt, and possibly Larrabee (depending on the proposal), would remain unchanged.

All proposals take into account that Lowell Elementary will need to temporarily close while earthquake safety retrofitting is completed during the 2008-09 school year. The timing associated with adjustments to Lowell's boundaries help to minimize the number of students who would need to relocate before, during and after the seismic work. We will work with the Lowell school community in making these decisions after the Board adopts a boundary proposal.

One modification is being recommended to middle school attendance boundaries to coincide with the proposed elementary revisions. High school attendance areas would not be affected. 

View maps and provide written input to the School Board at http://www.bham.wednet.edu/staff/Elemboundarycomm.htm Submit input to the Board from this Web site by May 1 or attend a public input session. Dates for the input sessions will be posted on this site. Input will be read or heard and considered by the School Board prior to the Board's decision in May.