Moses Lake School District to form bond committee

Michelle Price,MLSD Superintendent

by Herald Staff Writer & CHERYL SCHWEIZER
| February 2, 2013 5:05 AM

MOSES LAKE - Growth, overcrowding, construction and where the Moses Lake School District goes from here will be the questions under discussion by a committee that school officials are hoping to form in March. The committee will be asked to make recommendations on the possibility of offering a new construction bond proposal to district voters.

District Superintendent Michelle Price said the first meeting of the new committee will be in late March or early April, after the March 21 community meeting designed to address overcrowding at the secondary level. The committee's first job is to ask school district residents how they think educational needs of the next 10 to 20 years, at a minimum, should be addressed.

A similar committee was formed in 2010, and recommended that a $115 million bond be offered to voters to build a second high school and two elementary schools. That was rejected by voters in February 2012.

Price said the process has to start over. "We have to go back to that next question, what are the facilities to support the needs of our students?" she said. "It will definitely be a do-over process for the future bond," if the committee decides one should be presented to the voters.

"We have to re-ask the questions and redesign," she said.

Some of that is being discussed during the meetings to find a solution to overcrowding at the secondary level. Part of the information-gathering process for that was an online survey where district patrons were asked to rate their preferences for school size. Among the 1,000 respondents, the option of a kindergarten through fifth grade was most popular, with a sixth-through-eighth grade middle school and freshmen at the high school.

The district already has committed to expanding full-day kindergarten to all 10 elementary schools and funding was included in the levy approved by voters last February, she said. But implementing full-day kindergarten cuts down the room available to move the sixth grade back to the elementary school, Price said.

The idea for both the bond committee and the overcrowding meetings is to solve problems, but avoid setting up situations that will create new problems in a few years, she said.

In both cases the goal is to find solutions that meet the educational needs of kids now in school and those who will be in school in the next 10 to 20 years, and do it in a way that's affordable for taxpayers, she said.

But some solutions that used to work might not work as well as the district grows, she said. She cited the example of the high school; there hasn't been a lot of discussion about a high school with more than 2,000 students.

Anyone interested in serving on the bond committee can contact Price at the district office, 509-766-2650.