Hearing set for Wednesday on enrollment boundaries
Parents in Greenacres and Liberty Lake are invited to attend a public hearing on the enrollment boundaries for the new elementary school expected to be built at Mission Avenue and Long Road. The hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Greenacres Elementary School, 17915 E. Fourth Ave.
A boundary review committee met in 2005 and established boundaries for the new school but those boundaries no longer work, said Central Valley School District spokeswoman Melanie Rose. With the previously set boundaries the school would be full to capacity the day it opened.
A review committee that includes parents at the affected schools has been meeting since September and has made some recommendations that will be discussed Wednesday. They are proposing that the border of Greenacres Elementary attendance area be moved north from Appleway to Interstate 90. “That would keep more students at Greenacres Elementary than the original boundary proposed, which would free up capacity at the new school,” Rose said.
The second proposed change would send students who live at Big Trout Lodge in Liberty Lake to Greenacres Elementary. Those students currently attend Liberty Lake Elementary. “The overall goal of this is to get the kindergarteners back to their school,” said Rose. The district could then close the kindergarten center.
The district is also accepting written public comment on the issue until Friday. Send comments to the school district, attention boundary review committee, at 19307 E. Cataldo, Spokane Valley, 99016.
Key Club needs fleece
The Central Valley High School Key Club is looking for polar fleece donations to make blankets for homeless shelters.
The club is holding its annual Holiday Service Party Dec. 15 at 6 p.m. in the school commons to make fleece blankets. Key Club adviser Krista Larsen, a CV science teacher, said students and Spokane Valley Kiwanis members will assemble no-sew fleece blankets and hot chocolate to distribute to children in homeless shelters.
She said last year 103 students and 13 Kiwanis members made 117 blankets and assembled 250 hot chocolate bags in two hours. She’s hoping to double the volunteers this year. “We just need the material,” she said.
Larsen said any color polar fleece material works, preferably 4x5-foot sections. Volunteers also need fabric ribbon to wrap the blankets.
Donations can be left in Larsen’s school box or taken to room C102. She can be reached at (509) 228-5153 or by e-mail at KLarsen@cvsd.org.
“We have great kids at CV,” she said. “Hopefully these blankets will be keeping children in the homeless shelters warm.”
Grant to buy computers
Morgen Larsen-Atwood, the librarian at Greenacres Elementary School, recently received a $1,000 grant from the Liberty Lake Kiwanis.
The funds will be used to purchase 18 refurbished computers from the “Computer for Kids Program.”
The computers are state lease returns that were refurbished by prisoners in the state penitentiary and will be purchased for $55 each.
Levy certification
Property owners in the West Valley School District will collect $7,095,726 from taxpayers in 2011. In 2010, the district was certified to collect $6,735,993. Assistant Superintendent Doug Matson said the district had been grandfathered in to collect 28 percent of its budget from the levy and with the new state law raising the maximum districts can collect, West Valley could have collected up to 32 percent. The district instead is sticking with 28.
Taxpayers can expect to pay $4.05 per $1,000 in assessed property value in 2011, up from $3.84 per $1,000 in 2010.