Lake Washington News: School Changes 2012-2013

Lake Washington School District is growing, by the equivalent of one elementary school a year for the next five years. The district has looked at alternatives to house this boom in student population and made two decisions, effective with the 2012-13 school year, to use its current school building space more efficiently. These two decisions, announced at the school board meeting on May 3, include changing its school grade configuration and shifting the junior high schools into which three elementary schools feed (Audubon Elementary, Bell Elementary, and Einstein Elementary Schools).

The majority of the district's growth over the next five to seven years will occur at the elementary school level. Moving from a grades K-6 elementary, 7-9 junior high and 10-12 high school system to a K-5 elementary, 6-8 middle school and 9-12 high school will shift one grade out of the elementary schools where space is already tight and move the population to the secondary schools, where more space is available.

While these changes will enable the district to use existing space more efficiently, there will still be a space problem at the high school level. The district plans public meetings for next fall to determine which of several options to select to address the remaining space issues.

Dr. Chip Kimball, superintendent, expressed his intent last spring to move toward a change in school grade configuration for academic reasons. He is concerned that ninth graders in the district's grades 7-9 junior high schools often do not fully recognize, despite admonitions from parents and teachers, that their high school transcript for graduation and college admissions purposes begins in ninth grade. Read more.

You can also see more on the school changes for 2012-2013 by visiting the new School Changes 2012-2013 section of the district web site.