Cd'A schools review boundaries today

COEUR d’ALENE — The Coeur d'Alene School District Board of Trustees will hold a special workshop meeting at 2:30 p.m. today in the Midtown Meeting Center.

The workshop will give the district's boundary review committee a place to begin as it considers what changes will need to be made to attendance zones for growth and safety as North Idaho's population expands and increasing pressure is put on schools that are already full or over capacity.

Flo Analytics, the Portland-based company conducting the zone change review, will present and discuss "springboard" options.

"This will provide the committee a jumping-off point for considering potential adjustments to school attendance zones," Coeur d'Alene Public Schools director of communications Scott Maben said Monday. "We expect the springboard proposal to evolve into something quite different over the next few months. Using the consultant’s tools and mapping software, the review committee will analyze data, explore scenarios and consider community feedback from open house meetings this winter."

The boundary review committee comprises nearly 40 members — administrators and parents from each school that could be impacted by changes (Venture High is the exception as it will not be affected by zoning changes); members of the school district's long-range planning committee; and members of the superintendent advisory committee.

A zoning process survey was sent to Coeur d'Alene families at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year. More than 1,700 responses were returned: 321 from parents and guardians of high-schoolers, 456 from parents and guardians of middle-schoolers and 967 from parents and guardians of elementary students.

More than 93 percent of those surveyed said they are aware of the challenge of overcrowding in the district. Just under three quarters of the participants were aware of the challenges with imbalanced student enrollment and the district's plans to change school boundaries. Visit www.cdaschools.org and click on "boundary review" to view the survey results and comments from participants.

"It’s clear that people do care about this," Maben said in a Press article last month. "That (number of responses) is probably close to one third of the households representing our students."

The community is invited to attend today’s workshop, although it will not be a meeting to submit public comment. Two open houses for gathering public comment about the boundary review will be held in January and February. Anyone with questions or comments is welcome to contact the boundary committee by emailing boundaries@cdaschools.org at any time.

The Midtown Meeting Center is at 1505 N. Fifth St. in Coeur d'Alene.