Members trying to find the best solution for students and parents

Back in January when the Tahoma School District Boundary Committee was selected, they knew they had a big project in front of them. Distributing thousands of kids between schools, while making sure they followed certain rules and regulations, was not going to be an easy task. During the meeting that took place Feb. 24, the committee broke off into four groups and started drawing out boundaries and talking about distributions with maps made up for them.

Two weeks later, on March 9, the committee met again to talk about the maps. During the Feb. 24 meeting, two out of the five maps made for them were discarded after discussing the parameters they had to follow. The committee all agreed they wanted more time with the maps and were also given the choice of making their own maps, as long as they followed the rules and parameters that were discussed.

At the fourth meeting on March 9, the four groups had discarded the three other maps that were made for them and made their own maps. The parameters they had to follow were the same for the parameters of the original five maps.

The parameters were:

• to keep neighborhoods together, maintain sensitivity to diverse and rural populations-equity;

• consider a balance of present and predicted future growth with the reasonable use of building capabilities to preserve the longevity of the plan; and

• doable/affordable/efficient for transportation meaning they had to consider current and planned accessibility for transportation to the neighborhoods to reduce transit times and consider class size legislation in the number of students/classrooms fitting in a school.

The walking committee met the morning before the March 9 meeting and discussed the students who could walk to school. The walkers would include any student in a 1-mile radius (or close enough to the 1-mile radius). They again agreed to not have any students walking across highway 169 because it is too dangerous. They will be looking into getting sidewalks for areas that will have walkers that do not have sidewalks currently.

The four groups presented their plan to everyone and all of their maps followed the parameters. Two of the groups worked together so their maps were almost identical. After voting one of the identical maps out, the committee agreed that the other three maps would work. The next step for them is to send their maps to be reviewed by transportation to see if they would work and will be sent off to be professionally made by Cedar River GIS who made the previous five maps.

The discussion between the parents observing was more positive than at the last meeting. Most parents were feeling more positive about the changes they had seen between the last few meetings. One parent said they liked seeing the boundary process because they see how hard the committee has been working. While not every parent will be happy with the outcome, most parents think it will benefit more students in the end.

Two things the committee wants the public to know is how hard they have been working on these maps and the boundaries. They have spent many hours outside of the meetings working on the maps and discussing the boundaries. They also want the public to know that even though they are on the committee, they are not seeking what will benefit them and their neighborhoods. They are seeking to find what makes sense for everyone in the school district that this will affect. They are representing more than 3,000 students, not just their students or their neighborhoods.