The Lake Washington School Board approved changes to the school zone boundaries preserving the current configuration for several neighborhoods such as Yarrow Ridge, yet the effects on special education children remains to be seen.

The final recommendation brought to the school board Jan. 26 for the Lake Washington Learning Community involved moving 53 middle schoolers to the Juanita Learning Community, the latter of which shuffled around 113 students as part of what the school district intended to be a more even distribution of the growing student population.

The vote was a victory for Yarrow Ridge residents in the Lakeview School Zone. In December, all three scenarios for the learning community involved moving their neighborhood from Lakeview to Ben Franklin Elementary and Rose Hill Middle School. Meanwhile, a subsidized housing complex located across the South Kirkland Park and Ride on Northeast 38th Place was slated to be a part of Lakeview Zone.

After organized protests against the school district’s proposed scenarios by Lakeview parents that included possible legal action, the three scenarios were whittled down to two. One of the options would have still moved them, while the other would not.

Bellevue resident Deanna Androski, a parent with two children in the Lakeview Zone who was among the Yarrow Ridge residents against the proposed move, said they are pleased with the vote. At the same time, they are surprised by the final boundary changes that bear little resemblance to the original scenarios first presented.

“Ultimately it’s a relief that they’re not only not moving any to Franklin but anyone in the south end,” she said. “We think there are better neighborhoods to choose. I think it would be a better long term solution to do so.”

For parents spending hours of their week attempting to influence the final recommendation, Androski said it was “incredibly nerve-racking” waiting to see whether or not their efforts to keep their children at Lakeview would ultimately work.

“We’ve spent so much time and energy and emotion in trying to keep our neighborhood intact. When the proposal was posted we weren’t included, we were super excited but not trying to celebrate before the final decision because you never know what will happen at the eleventh hour. When we got the final decision we could finally exhale and breathe and be relieved. But not until it became final.”

Aside from having to drive their children outside of their neighborhood and away from a school where the parents have volunteered, parents who work in real estate said the change would have negatively impacted the value of their homes.

Now that they will remain in their school, Androski said, parents such as herself are looking to advocate for a new levy.

“Now we still have to deal with overcrowding,” she said.

Kathryn Reith, spokesperson for the LWSD, described the process as difficult, but ideally will enable the district to handle the overcrowding until they can present a new bond measure for voter approval. The boundary changes will remain in place for three years, at which point the district hopes to have the funding needed to build new schools.

Last year Proposition 3, which included a $755 million bond, failed to gain the 60 percent majority needed for approval.

“The goal was to have something that would enable schools to continue for three years with our projected growth,” she said. “We can’t control who builds or grows or has kids, so obviously things could change and we will keep monitoring very closely.”

Not all people, however, are pleased with the changes. In a letter to the editor, Kirkland resident Rob Tepper criticized the district for how the changes will impact special-needs students at Lakeview Elementary.

“While my three children are not a part of the special needs program at Lakeview Elementary, I think it’s disgraceful that the Lake Washington School Board’s new strategy is to put special-needs kids in the crosshairs,” he wrote. “The stress of relocation is more likely to have harmful effects on a special needs child than anyone else… Perhaps the School Board theorizes that they’ve now found the parents who are too consumed and exhausted in their every day lives to take on yet another battle.”

Reith said the decision to move the special needs program hasn’t been set in stone yet, as the district has not finalized all the details. She added that they have also moved QUEST programs around as well.

“When that happens we communicate with the families but they aren’t announced,” she said. “There’s a lot going on people don’t know about… This is the kind of thing we actually do from time to time, and oftentimes it’s because the space that’s really needed for a particular program isn’t available… in this case, the boundary committee studied all sorts of possibilities. We struggled with finding a viable boundary for Lakeview, so now we’re looking at ‘Is there a viable program move for Lakeview?’ but we’re looking at it and really trying to determine are there things we can now do through program moves that we couldn’t do through boundary moves.”

“Those kinds of things, it takes some time, because you have to look at the things for the program and space for schools,” she also said. “All those things have to be reviewed and taken into consideration.”

Information about the approved boundary changes can be found at www.lwsd.org/News/Reboundary.