Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos discusses the upcoming boundary changes for the 2019 school year last October in Centralia.
The Centralia School Board addressed boundary changes for the final time Wednesday evening, before its final vote later this month.
“The current boundary map of our district starts with the K-3 schools, and as you can see they are not beautifully designed,” said Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos. “A lot of this changed over time with developments of homes and other things.”
The Centralia School Board discussed the boundary changes needed as a result of the district’s shift to a K-6 school model at its study session Wednesday evening. Davalos presented two maps with proposed boundaries that they board intends to vote on later this month.
Davalos noted that Edison Elementary School has the densest neighborhood in the city, which is why it has the smallest boundary. Because the current boundaries are so spread out, some students spend one and a half hours on the bus each way, Davalos said. New boundaries would shorten this ride time, he said.
The study session lasted a little over an hour. Davalos reviewed the school construction bond Centralia School District voters passed February 2017 and the 15-member boundary-change committee that proposed map options to the community and gathered feedback.
Davalos also discussed the process committee members used when creating the maps and a series of community discussions the district hosted in November 2018 for the new boundaries.
Originally, the district had one option for boundary changes set to come into effect for the 2019-20 school year.
Numerous parents in the Centralia School District, however, strongly opposed that configuration at previous public meetings and discussions. The Centralia School District did not specifically explain that the boundary lines would change in its information for voters, although it did advertise the configuration change.
Parents in the Centralia School District have been vocal about what they felt was a lack of transparency from the district, and concerns over new childcare arrangements.
On Wednesday, however, only one parent spoke at the study session. Kyle Markstrom said he felt the boundary change benefitted his family more than the current K-3 and 4-6 model.
Davalos spent roughly 10 minutes discussing each map option.
“I think what stands out is the Edison boundary,” said Davalos of Map A. “As we mentioned, Edison being a more dense neighborhood and an older neighborhood, is really not going to be one that is stretched far. So this is about the limit about the boundary that we could build for Edison. … We’ve even calculated the classrooms for Map A to make sure that they could all work and we could actually pull this off and make that happen.”
The Edison boundary for Map B is slightly different.
“I think if you go back and forth between the maps, you will see the small changes that this makes,” Davalos said. “The results of Map B, Edison is a little larger, as you will see later in that calculation, but they (students) will fit.”
The Centralia School District hosted six boundary change discussions to gather public input — one at each elementary school and an additional discussion in Spanish.
“We are trying to be as transparent as possible,” said Davalos during the study session.
The Centralia School Board will hold its next regular meeting on Wednesday, January 23. The board is slated to vote on which boundary map the district will implement in the 2019-20 school year. The district is currently constructing two new elementary schools and conducting a full like-new remodel of its high school. Elementary schools in the district previously used a K-3 and 4-6 model, but will change to a K-6 model this fall.
