School district mulls moving fifth grade to middle school
MOSES LAKE — In order to cope with overcrowding, several Moses Lake Elementary Schools are preparing to relocate all of their fifth-grade classes beginning next fall.
“It is so crowded,” Superintendent Michelle Price told the Moses Lake School Board on Thursday. “Some schools are already overfull this year.”
Price said that because of the crowding situation, the district is planning on moving all fifth-graders from Lakeview Elementary and Garden Heights Elementary to the portable classrooms at Chief Moses Middle School.
“We’re working at Chief Moses to house sixth- through eighth-graders in the building while the fifth-graders are in the portables,” Price said. “We have a lot of logistics to work through with the teachers.”
To help support the planned move, Price said the district wants to add an additional counselor and a vice principal at Garden Heights, where enrollment has reached 530 students.
Price also said the district is planning on purchasing a number of new portable classrooms — one for Knolls Vista Elementary, two for Park Orchard, and one for Longview — to help house all the students.
At Park Orchard, for example, the school is already renting space from the nearby Boys and Girls Club.
“Fourteen of 19 classrooms are overfull,” Price said. “They qualify for another teacher, but we have no place to put one.”
Price said Sage Point Elementary School was also on the verge of needing new classroom space, and the district was considering moving an entire grade level to Midway Elementary, but has not made any decision about that yet.
The situation is only going to get worse, Price said, given that Grant County’s birth rate is higher than the state average.
“With the birthrates I’ve seen, we’re anticipating large enrollments for kindergarten,” Price said.
Which has a cascade effect, as an increase in the number of kindergarten teachers and classrooms will then require more first-grade teachers and classrooms and so on.
“We have schools that have outgrown their facilities, and we need a long-term plan,” Price said.
Voters in the Moses Lake School District are scheduled to vote on that long-term plan on Feb. 14, a $135 million bond to build a new high school, a new elementary school, and remodel the current high school.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.
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