Dear BSD Board and Superintendent Dr. Mills,

As Wilburton community residents we were informed by our representatives in the Elementary 18 Attendance Area and Middle and High School Feeder Area Committee that Wilburton is listed as one of the top candidate neighbors to move to Odle Middle School and Sammamish High School.  We are very concerned about this proposal.

As shown in Figure 1, Nearly 80% of Wilburton residents who participated in a survey recently are not happy at all about the potential changes and the process to make the changes. The scope of the meeting and the restrictions on the potential solutions to solve the future overcapacity issues at Chinook and Bellevue High School (BHS) make Wilburton the only neighborhood that has to change its elementary, middle and high schools. We believe this will have a huge impact on our community. We also believe that this proposal will not help to solve the overcrowding problems of Chinook Middle school and BHS in the long term. Here are the reasons why we are upset about this process.

1.    The scope of the meeting is set up in an adverse way to Wilburton community.

Many of our residents feel it is inappropriate to combine the discussions of E18 and the secondary feeder pattern together. This meeting should focus on E18 only. If the potential overcrowding at Chinook and BHS in the future is really urgent to be solved now, there should be an independent meeting focusing on secondary feeder pattern issue with a more global view by involving all neighboring areas including Woodridge, not just E18 attendance areas. Only in this way, can an effective long term solution be found on a basis that is equally fair to all neighbors. By combining E18 and secondary feeder discussion together and at the same time adding the restriction that several areas including Woodridge should not change schools, BSD is not considering all possible solutions equally and adversely putting Wilburton community to the top of the list of attendance areas that need to change middle and high schools.

2.    By restricting the possible solutions to overcrowding at Chinook and BHS, BSD has set up a process that is unfair to E18 and the Wilburton neighborhood.

Since BSD will not even consider changes to the middle/high school feeder patterns for any school except E18, it certainly appears that this process has been designed to achieve a particular outcome - to transfer the feeder pattern of E18 and the Wilburton neighborhood to Odle and Sammamish. Not to mention the impact that this will bring to our kids and community property, changing Wilburton to Odle Middle School and Sammamish High school does not solve the future overcrowding issue of Chinook and BHS at all.

First, let’s look at the data. The Scenario Suggestion WorkSheet handed to representatives at the second meeting shows that the numbers of future elementary, middle, and high school student increases are only 4, 2, and 2 respectively for Wilburton. These are much smaller and ignorable numbers compared to downtown, which are 252, 102, and 118, and BelRed, which are 147, 59, and 69 respectively (see table 1). It is BelRed and downtown areas that will add many more students in the near future and give more pressures to the overcapacity problems to Chinook and BHS. Also, BelRed has virtually no current students so it would affect much fewer people. We also noticed that the future student increase for Woodridge has been carelessly listed as 0, 0, and 0, which are certainly inappropriate. In fact, if Wilburton is pushed to Odle and Sammamish High, more families will invest in downtown and Woodridge properties (either rent or buy). We can foresee that future increases of students in these areas will be even higher than the current data. Therefore, changing Wilburton to Odle Middle School and Sammamish High school does not solve the overcapacity issue of Chinook and BHS.

Second, in terms of vicinity, Woodridge is further away from Chinook and BHS than Wilburton is. We are not convinced by the explanation that Woodridge students will not be attending E18 and hence their feeder pattern is not part of this committee's task to determine. Again, this is related to the scope of this meeting we questioned earlier. If combining the discussion of E18 and secondary feeder pattern is definitely necessary, and if the reason of transferring Wilburton students to Odle and Sammamish High is to release the overcrowding pressure at Chinook and BHS in the future, then any effort towards that direction should be considered and is related to this meeting.

3. Wilburton neighborhood has been sacrificed many times historically. We do not want to suffer more.

Residents who have lived in Wilburton for a long time remember that we were the neighborhood that was moved back and forth to accommodate the changes of BSD. Our elementary school was closed and used as a training center because it was close to the central office. Our Hyak Junior High was closed and several other schools were moved into it when those schools were being remodeled. At that time, residents had to regularly call the central office because the staff of the transient school was mistreating the parking space of the community. Some residents also feel that we were not appropriately notified when a high school was moved into a building. They had to stand outside in the morning to keep students from parking in front of their mailboxes as BSD resisted their efforts to put in parking restrictions.

Today, people moved to Wilburton mainly because of the specific schools. We paid much more for our properties compared to areas that currently feed into Odle and Sammamish High. Pushing Wilburton to Odle and Sammamish High is unfair for the current Wilburton families and will significantly impact the future housing values of this community.

Currently the committee was comprised of 22 representatives including 14 teachers/principals, and 8 parents. Most of them are from Enatai, Clyde Hill, Woodridge, Chinook, Odle, Bellevue HS and Sammamish HS that do not share the same interests with Wilburton community. Forming the committee this way and setting open house to be a much later date makes Wilburton residents unable to express our concerns in an adequate way. We hope there is a venue for our parents and families to discuss the fate of Wilburton with BSD.

To summarize, it is very disappointing that the process will not consider the full range of solutions to the current attendance issues. We urge BSD to make efforts on solving the overcrowding problem of Chinook and BHS either in a different meeting or with a global view by involving all neighboring areas including Woodridge. BSD should revise this process to ensure it is fair and the outcomes are based on an objective evaluation of all possible solutions.

 

Thank you!

Sincerely yours,

Wilburton community residents