The new Tahoma High School is well underway and a new elementary school is set to break ground this summer. With the addition of a larger high school and an elementary school, the question from many parents is how the students will be distributed among the schools.

A Boundary Review Committee was formed at a Tahoma School Board meeting in 2015. There were 22 parents selected at random to be part of the committee. About 168 parents were interested in being part of the committee. There were 15 selected with seven others chosen as alternates. Along with the parents are eight facilitators, all part of the Tahoma School District, and Superintendent Rob Morrow.

Among the issues to be considered include the Washington Class Size Reduction measure, what the district will do with the portables it has now and bus routes. Another issue to consider is most of the elementary schools are located in the north end of the school district, while most of the population is in the south end.

It appears most of the elementary classes will need to be decreased by 10 students or more because of the class size reduction measure, which means adding more classrooms. The school district will be keeping a little more than half of the portables. The district has about 70 portables but 40 will be destroyed because they are too old and run down to keep. There are 10 portables in good condition that will be used right away, while the other 20 need to be remolded or updated to be used, which is in the district budget.

Currently there are more elementary schools located where fewer families live, which will be an issue when deciding the school that the students will attend.

This also brings up the bus route issue. The district does not want students to sit on a bus for a long period of time getting to and from a school. Test runs on bus routes are planned to see how long it will take to transport students.

Another factor the committee is focusing on is keeping communities together. The members hope to avoid sending half of a neighborhood to one school while the other goes to another.

There are 3,800 elementary school students who need to be distributed between six schools. If they each get the same number of students, about 634 students will be at each school, which works out well with the smaller classes sizes. But, more students might need to go to a certain schools because of location.

One misconception board members have heard from some parents is that it’s not just the students moving to a new school, but also the staff. Some parents have voiced concern the teachers or other staff being moved. However, even if a child stays at a school, the staff may not.

The district wants an even distribution of teachers at each school, Morrow said. They want to distribute the teachers in a fair way, they do not want all first-year teachers in one school while other schools have the most experienced teachers.

The district is expecting as much as 70 to 80 percent of the students may be moving to new schools. All of the high school and middle school students will move, and many of the elementary school student.

The district has had boundary reconfigurations before, but not as large as this one.

The district officials hope the decisions will be final and there will be no need to make changes or adjustments in the foreseeable future.

There could be changes if homes were built in a certain location and more families moved into the community. The officials do not see that happening any time in the near future.

If parents really does not want their child to move schools, they can sign a waiver. There will be criteria that will have to be met, but the specifics on what those are have yet to be decided.

The committee wants to make decisions by the fall of 2016, which will give parents a full year to prepare for the move and any changes that need to be made.

The committee has numerous decisions to make in the next nine months with the help of parents, teachers, principles and other school board members.

The committee will be seeking ideas from the community throughout the process. The members want parents to voice their concerns about moving schools or anything else related to the new schools.