Third-graders eat lunch in a crowded classroom at Pleasant Valley Primary. The southern part of the Battle Ground school district faces growth as hundreds of homes are slated for construction and sale in the coming months. (Ariane Kunze/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
As growth encroaches on the southern part of the district, Battle Ground Public Schools faces a potentially booming student population in facilities already stretched beyond their intended capacity.
Housing construction in the district’s southernmost neighborhoods — within the attendance boundaries of Pleasant Valley Elementary and Middle schools, Glenwood Heights Primary School and Laurin Middle School — could mean an influx of hundreds more students. But district officials say those schools are already over capacity, and they have had to add portables and make other adjustments to accommodate the rapid growth.
The Pleasant Valley campus, which is home to two schools, had 1,130 students in a building constructed for 993 students, according to district data collected on March 24. With another 734 single-family homes slated for construction in that section of the district, demographic data points to 454 new students within school boundaries.
To the east at Glenwood Heights Primary School and Laurin Middle School, there are 1,354 students. The schools were built to accommodate 1,084 students. Another 951 single-family homes are slated for construction, as well as 458 apartments. That could mean an additional 706 students within those boundaries.
For every 100 single-family homes built, 61.9 students are added to the district. For every 100 apartments, 25.6 students are added, according to district estimates.
District officials warn that projections aren’t an exact science, however. Even if demographics point to additional students, the district has no way of knowing how old — and therefore what school the students will be at — or how many students there will be at all in coming subdivisions.
“We, the school district, do not count students until we see the whites of their eyes,” said spokeswoman Rita Sanders.
Even so, the district is taking precautionary measures to ensure there are available seats for the possible growth of its student body. The school board last month voted to cancel 46 boundary exemptions at the Pleasant Valley campus, and last year to cancel 107 at the Glenwood-Laurin campus, Sanders said. That does not include students who have some legal exemption for attending a school other than their home campus, such as the McKinney-Vento Act, which guarantees that schools provide homeless students with transportation to their school regardless of where they’re living.
A new 10-plex, a modular building with 10 classrooms, was installed at the Pleasant Valley campus last summer. The district will also move eight portable classrooms from Yacolt Primary School to Glenwood-Laurin, and add a 10-plex at Yacolt. The district also converted a large shop into three classrooms at Laurin Middle School.
But if growth becomes too much of a challenge to mitigate by canceling boundary exemptions or reshaping classrooms, the district could explore redrawing boundary lines, incoming Superintendent Mark Ross said.
“We don’t want to inconvenience students and parents, but we may have to,” said Ross, currently the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning.
The concerns of a growing student body come on the tail of a failed bond effort by the district. The proposed $80 million bond would have paid for the reconstruction of both campuses, as well as the construction of a new K-4 and 5-8 campus in the southeast corner of the district west of Northeast 152nd Avenue between Northeast 99th and Northeast 119th streets.
The Facilities Improvement Team, Battle Ground’s volunteer board tasked with developing a campus improvement plan for the district, recommended at a recent meeting putting the same bond in front of voters a second time, Sanders said. The school board must vote to put that measure on another ballot.
Though the school board has not officially voted one way or the other, President Monty Anderson said at a recent meeting members discussed waiting until February or April 2018 before re-running the bond.
“There are three board positions that are up in November,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t make sense to the voters to vote for board members and a tax measure at the same time.”
And if current building activity is any indication, growth isn’t going to slow or stop anytime soon. The district receives $5,128 in school impact fees for every single-family home that is developed to mitigate growth. In February, the district received $718,000 in impact fees for the whole district — nearly four times the $184,000 it has averaged in the last three years.
“That can only support so many students,” Sanders said.
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