Bellevue School District revises consolidation proposal

The Bellevue School District has revised its proposed consolidation plan and taken Ardmore Elementary off its list of elementary schools where students would move to other buildings beginning next school year.

Under the new recommendations, released this week by interim Superintendent Art Jarvis, Wilburton Elementary students would go to Clyde Hill and Enatai elementaries and Eastgate Elementary would be combined just with Spiritridge Elementary. Advanced Learning students at Spiritridge would move to Woodridge. Ardmore wouldn’t be consolidated, and the Arabic Heritage Language program that is launching in September would be added to the elementary school.

The School Board will vote March 16 on its final decision.

The original proposal had Ardmore combining at Bennett, Cherry Crest and Sherwood Forest elementaries, and Eastgate going to Spiritridge and Somerset elementaries.

At a public hearing held last month for the Ardmore community, families and staff noted that Ardmore is a Title I school, which means it receives federal funding because it serves a high percentage of low-income students. About 38% of students are English-language learners. Speakers said the proposals had sown confusion, especially for families whose first language isn’t English.

The revised recommendations took into account Ardmore’s student population with a “high percentage of students and families who are farthest from educational justice,” Jarvis wrote in a presentation with deputy superintendents Melissa deVita and Eva Collins. The Arabic heritage program, which the district already planned to add to an existing school community, would add about 130 students to the school, many of whom aren’t yet in the district.

For Eastgate students, the district proposes sending students to just Spiritridge instead of Spiritridge and Somerset elementaries. Sending students to just one school rather than splitting them would help maintain a familylike culture, the superintendents wrote. The Olympia program, which is hosted by Eastgate and serves special education students in the area associated with autism spectrum disorder, would also move to Spiritridge.

Woodridge Elementary would see the greatest population change of any school, nearly doubling in size with the addition of the advanced learning program — an estimated 200 students — from Spiritridge.

The consolidation plan comes as the school district anticipates a $30 million to $35 million shortfall for the 2023-24 school year in part because of declining enrollment. According to the district, each consolidated school will result in about $3 million in savings.

Jarvis presented the updated recommendations Thursday afternoon at the regularly scheduled School Board meeting.

“My hope is to shed light on the consolidation issue as part of a solution set,” Jarvis said at the meeting. “Bellevue School District is a terrific school system, but it is not immune to financial woes.”

DeVita pointed to the increasing number of elementary schools with 400 or fewer students — in the 2019-20 school year, two of the district’s 18 elementary schools had fewer than 400 students. By the 2022-23 school year, that had increased to eight elementaries. With no consolidation, it would rise to 10 next school year. With the district’s proposed changes, there would be three elementaries with fewer than 400 students.

Smaller schools are more difficult to fund the staffing needed to keep them open, incoming Superintendent Kelly Aramaki said at the meeting.

“It’s not that we don’t value small schools, because there is something amazing about having smaller school communities,” he said. “The problem is only when the schools get so small that we can’t fund full-time librarians, full-time counselors and all of the services that our kids need.”

Lisa Ross, whose daughter attends Wilburton, questioned why the school was being impacted with a plan to send students to different buildings, when it too has an inclusive, familylike environment.

“Why do you think splitting our school in half and shipping our kids across the city is a responsible way to go about it?” she said. “Absolutely not.”

Some Bellevue staff spoke about feeling put in a difficult position. If they advocated for keeping their schools open, that could mean layoffs and losing their jobs, Bellevue Education Association President Jill Rock said.

“Clarity could have calmed the chaos,” she said.

BEA Vice President Regen Lorden said that as a union, they would fight to keep as many jobs as possible. Educators are being faced with the unknown of where they will be working next year, who they will be working with, or if they will have a job at all, she added.

“As a parent of an elementary schoolchild, I feel for those parents who are looking at sending their child into the unknown,” she said. “A new school, a new bus route, teachers, friends and community for a young child can be scary and anxiety-inducing, which weighs heavily on a parent. But often our young kids are stronger than we give them credit for.”

Lindsey Hartzel said approving the plan would be an easy way out for the district at the expense of children, including her 5- and 9-year old who attend Eastgate. Hundreds of young children, who have only known an unstable education, would be traumatized, she added.

“What you’re consolidating is the impact. Focusing it onto small children instead of dispersing it evenly throughout the district, you are forcing hundreds of small children to diminish their quality of education so that other students can have a better one,” she said. “This is not what the greater good looks like.”