Moses Lake hosts second redistricting session

MOSES LAKE - Moses Lake School District administrators hosted the second redistricting session.

The three scheduled community rounds aim to gather input on where neighborhoods for individual schools service areas, or attendance zones, should be located.

"This isn't a fun process for any of us," Moses Lake School District Superintendent Michelle Price said to more than 50 people attending Tuesday's session at the Moses Lake High School.

With Park Orchard Elementary School set to open in the fall, school district officials are hoping to ease overcrowding in middle and elementary schools while establishing set boundaries for school neighborhoods.

School district policy states redistricting requires consideration of geographic proximity, instructional capacity, projected enrollment, neighborhood groupings, traffic patterns, frequency of re-zoning, special programs as well as community input.

In addition, service areas may be revised as considered necessary by the district and the superintendent will develop procedures for establishing and revising attendance zones which utilize staff expertise, available technology and parental input.

Moses Lake School District Transportation Manager John Eschenbacher presented three potential neighborhood plans for elementary schools and another three for middle schools.

For the proposed elementary school boundaries, Sage Point and Longview did not have any changes, while Knolls Vista, North and Larson would have the biggest changes with the addition of Park Orchard.

Price said that Longview and Sage Point have a large number of "out-of-service-area" students and it would make sense to cap enrollment of out-of-area students at the two schools.

Proposed plans for the middle school vary between moving 98 and 114 students from Frontier to Chief Moses depending on where the boundary lines are placed.

"We know down the road we are going to build another middle school," said Eschenbacher.

Eschenbacher said the district is aiming to have around 350 kids at each elementary school and to move about 100 students from Frontier Middle School to Chief Moses Middle School to ease crowding.

The final redistricting session is March 29 at 6:30 in the choir room at Moses Lake High School.