Someday when all the pieces fall into place the Tahoma School District officials would like to build a fifth elementary school.

A proposed policy change by King County, however, may further delay or possibly derail those plans.

Tahoma’s fifth elementary school site is on the 80 acre property it purchased years ago which the junior high now calls home. The potential problem is the fact the property is outside of the urban growth boundary which was established in 1991 as part of the Growth Management Act.

Current policy, explained county planning staff, allows for school structures to be built and that in rural areas sewer service isn’t allowed unless is installed to solve a health issue for an existing structure or for the needs of a public school.

Paul Reitenbach, comprehensive plan project manager for the county, explained in an email interview that current code requires that middle and high schools built in rural areas to have conditional use permits.

“At issue is whether sewers should continue to be allowed to be extended to serve public schools in the rural area,” Reitenbach wrote. “Currently, the King County Code and Comprehensive Plan do not allow sewer extensions into the rural area except to serve failed septic tanks for existing structures, short subdivisions when there is no timely and reasonable alternative, and public schools when alternative methods of waste disposal are not cost-feasible.”

School sites in rural areas near the urban growth boundary are cheaper to hook up to sewer lines, Reitenbach wrote, than to install a large septic system on site. Because this is currently allowed under county policies, public schools in rural areas have been hooking up to sewer lines.

“Our issue is that availability of sewers to school districts that serve both rural and urban areas has allowed the school districts to purchase rural tracts of land, that if hooked up to a sewer, could support large schools serving urban students as well as rural students,” Reitenbach said. “We know that there are at least 19 more school district sites in the rural area that can always be developed with schools, but whether they will be mega-schools serving large numbers of urban students or schools sized to serve the rural area on septic systems is the issue.”

Kevin Patterson, spokesman for the Tahoma School District, said the district purchased its property as part of a trade off for the Maple Woods development at the sound end of the city of Maple Valley and as part of that trade.

“We had an agreement we could purchase property and build schools,” Patterson said. “We were going to run a tight line sewer, which means it would be for a specific use, our schools. Nothing else would be allowed to hook up to it.”

District officials are concerned that if the proposal is passed as written it could make it much more difficult to build a fifth elementary school to help relieve overcrowded classrooms. After the failure of the district’s construction bond measure in April this could be another tough pill to swallow for Tahoma.

“Under this proposal we wouldn’t be grandfathered,” Patterson said. “We didn’t even know about this until May. This process had been moving through the update to the (county comprehensive) plan but we weren’t aware of this provision.”

Tahoma is part of the Puget Sound Schools Coalition and officials were alerted about this proposal when the coalition found out about it.

“We’ve been working with them to try and communicate with the county that we don’t want this to happen,” Patterson said.

Grace Yuan, legal counsel for the coalition, said school districts have been allowed to use tight line sewer connections since 1992 and because of the rules that have been in place since then, PSSC members have concerns.

There are 19 school district sites in King County that could potentially be affected by the proposed changes.

“There are numerous questions that have not been answered regarding the proposal,” Yuan said. “It was released in April without any consultation with any of the 19 school districts. The school districts have a legitimate concern, there are millions of dollars of public investments that have already been made.”

Reitenbach pointed to a pair of so-called mega schools in rural areas that concern the county. He cited Issaquah School District’s ninth grade campus as well as the proposed choice school that would focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) located east of Redmond.

Pacific Cascade opened in Issaquah in 2005 as a freshman-only campus but in the fall of 2010 became Pacific Cascade Middle School and now serves students in sixth through eighth grade. In 2009-10, the last year it was a freshman campus, there were 975 students, according to Issaquah School District officials. During its first year as a middle school, Pacific Cascade housed 695 students.

The STEM school near Redmond, which is part of the Lake Washington School District, would reportedly house 675 students.

Tahoma Junior High, which opened in the fall of 2000, had about 1,200 students in eighth and ninth grade this past school year. District officials expect those numbers to stay flat in the next academic year. The proposed fifth elementary school would accomodate 800 students.

District officials can offer their input at a meeting before the Growth Management Planning Council at 4 p.m. on June 29 when the board considers the proposal as part of its review of the final draft of the 2011 King County Countywide Planning Policies.

“The school districts fundamentally disagree with the proposal,” Yuan said. “There are students throughout the school districts and we need to have the ability to serve them. This is a pretty adverse impact on school districts throughout King County and we’re opposed to it.”

Patterson said the district hopes to influence the decisions made about the proposed policy changes though it appears there may not be much time left to add input.

Ultimately, the GMPC will make a recommendation to the county council, which could consider the proposal anytime between now and the end of the year. It just depends on where the council is in its work schedule and what needs to be cleared off its plate — for example, the county budget process starts in the fall and the council may not interrupt this process to consider this proposal.

Whatever the timeline may be, Patterson said, district officials hope the county can strike a balance between serving the needs of those who live inside and out of the urban growth boundary.

“We understand the need and the reasons behind the urban growth boundary and land use polices and we think this is unfair and it ultimately punishes kids,” Patterson said. “We need a place to build schools and now that place is threatened.”