In the coming years, children living in Downtown Bellevue, the Wilburton and Spring District neighborhoods will attend the soon-to-be-built Elementary 18, the school board voted this week.
Elementary school-aged students living in the area bordered by the Lake Hills Connector to the south, State Route 520 to the north, Southeast 136th Street to the east and Interstate-405 to the west, along with the downtown core between Main Street and Northeast 12th Street, will attend the new school.
The new school and amended attendance areas will help ease overcrowding. Over the last couple of years, the Bellevue School District has consistently been growing at a rate of 600 students annually.
The resolution passed Aug. 30 also addressed changes to middle and high school attendance areas.
Downtown Bellevue and Wilburton neighborhood residents will attend Chinook Middle School and Bellevue High School. Children living inside the boundary created by I-405 and 120th Avenue Northeast between Main Street and Northeast 8th Street, as well as the Bel-Red Corridor/Spring District will feed into Odle Middle School and Sammamish High School, according to the approved motion.
The district has been working with residents to establish the attendance area and resolve other issues around the new school for the last year.
Some Wilburton residents said they were concerned about an increase in traffic on their otherwise quiet streets. Many others voices opinions about the change the new school will cause to attendance areas.
Elementary 18 will serve families in Downtown Bellevue, Wilburton and the forthcoming Spring District. Not only will it change the attendance areas for Clyde Hill, Enatai and Woodridge Elementary school students, but what middle and high schools they attend.
During the attendance mapping process, the district held three separate open houses and allowed the public to vote on five proposed elementary and six middle and high school attendance maps. The elementary attendance area options presented largely affect five blocks between Main Street and Northeast 12th Street, while options for the middle and high schools affected larger portions of Bellevue.
Many parents said they were concerned that their students would be pulled from their current school to attend Elementary 18. In response, the district added in a grandfather clause.
Students who will be fifth-graders during the inaugural year of Elementary 18 — anticipated to be the 2018/2019 school year — may finish their final year as elementary students at their former school. Affected kindergartners through third-graders can file a “request to remain” form, though those requests will be approved on a space available basis.
Siblings of students receiving the fifth-grade exemption will also be allowed to remain at their former school in order to unify families.
With the population of Bellevue growing rapidly, the district is already researching locations for another new school, Elementary 19. They are hoping to find a property to purchase by the spring.
