The Boundary Review Committee will present two proposed boundary plans to the School Board at its meeting on June 14. Those plans will be a new, twice-amended version of the Plaid plan (renamed the Bryson plan) and the Hybrid plan.

Committee members on Wednesday first selected their top three plans each, then gave them a score based on the parameters set by the school board: 3 was the highest, and 1 the lowest. They could choose from any of the still active plans; eight plans received votes. The scores were as follows:

Bryson, 35
Hybrid, 28
Amended Freckle, 10
Amended Plaid, 7
Wild Rose, 4
Freckle, 3
Yellow, 2
Plaid, 2

After ranking the plans, the committee members voted on whether they supported presenting the top two plans (Bryson and Hybrid) to school board members for their consideration. They were asked to vote "thumbs up" if they supported presenting the two plans to the board; "thumbs sideways" if they could live with that decision; and "thumbs down" if they were against it. The vote was 13 thumbs up and sideways, and 2 thumbs down, which met the required "yes" threshold of 11 out of 15 that the facilitators and committee members discussed at the beginning of the process.

The Bryson plan was new to many committee members on Wednesday, which prompted one of the "no" votes. The other committee member who voted no said she did so because she does not support the Hybrid plan.

A small group of committee members spent considerable time in the past week working on the Plaid plan to fix issues that made it not viable for transportation. They first came up with a draft that was dubbed "Amended Plaid," then continued trying to balance student numbers at the school buildings until they came up with their final draft. One of the small group members who had been typing in their data and ideas went into labor, and emailed all of their collective work back to the group on her way to the hospital. She later delivered her new son, Bryson, and the group named their new plan in his honor.

The major differences in the Bryson plan, compared to Plaid, include:

• Lake Sawyer (south side of S.E. 288th St.) to RCES
• Greenbrier (south side of S.E. 288th St.) to RCES
• Eastwood Forest and the Trout Farm to GPES

The Bryson plan also provides the possibility to split the traffic from the southwest portion of the district on Witte Road and Maple Valley Highway, in order to relieve congestion on Witte. To see a PDF of the map, click here: http://goo.gl/6aop4W and then look on the right side of the page for "Bryson Plan" and "Key for Bryson Plan." As soon as possible, the Bryson plan will be added to the GIS mapping system link on the Tahoma website.

To view a listing of neighborhoods assigned to the Bryson and Hybrid plans, click here or visit the boundary review page on the Tahoma website. Major neighborhoods that are assigned to different schools under the two plans include: Cedar Downs, Cherokee Bay, Crystal Firs, Eastwood Forest, Fernwood Estates, Fiesta Land, Highlands of Lake Wilderness, Katesridge, Lake Sawyer southside, Lakeside Park, Lower Witte Road, Maxwell Road/Lake Francis area.

Also on Wednesday, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Dawn Wakeley provided a tool to allow the committee members to make simple comparisons between where each school is and where the students live, under the different plans. The analysis was done in response to a question from committee member Jim House at the previous meeting, about how to accurately examine differences between outliers in the district and the more concentrated population. For that information, click here: http://goo.gl/4Rv48T

In addition, Wakeley provided demographic data for an Amended Freckle, Amended Plaid and the Bryson plan, so that committee members could compare those versions to the data they received at their previous meeting on June 1. For the new data, click here: http://goo.gl/PwqNUj

Committee members were given time to ask questions, discuss and study the new information, then proceeded to rank the plans and vote as described above. They also started work on a "pro" and "con" list for the two plans, which will be given to the School Board. Some members said they might send additional items for that list via email.

The Bryson Plan is being evaluated to determine how the elementary buildings would feed to the two middle schools.

Extended public comments will be accepted during the June 14 School Board meeting, when the two plans are presented to the school board; each person who wishes to speak will still have three minutes to do so, but the board will extend the total amount of time for the boundary review topic comments past the 20-minute total that is normally allowed if there are additional people who want to speak. Community members may also make comments on the night that the board takes action, which could either happen at the June 28 meeting or at a later date if the board members want more time to study the plans and data. Board meetings are at 6:30 p.m. at Central Services.

Written comments will be accepted at the board meeting or by email. Email comments may be sent to Kevin Patterson, director of communication: kpatters@tahomasd.us

Committee members spent the week in between the June 1 and June 8 meetings absorbing the information and using it to determine whether they could rank any of the plans above the others.

When the process began in January, Transportation staff presented five plans for the committee's consideration: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue. Committee members voted to throw out the Orange and Green plans, and later tabled the Red, Yellow and Blue Plans. They then worked in small groups to create three plans of their own: Wild Rose, Periwinkle and Plaid. Each of those would have required significant changes in order to work for transportation; elements were pulled from all three to create the Hybrid Plan, which was presented to the public for comments at two community meetings.

In order to analyze the demographic data for the proposed boundary plans, Teaching and Learning Executive Director Dawn Wakeley showed the committee how much variation there is in the Tahoma student population in recent years. To do that, Wakeley pulled data on current students in grades kindergarten through 5, then moved backwards in time and pulled the same types of data from students three years ago, our current grades 3-8 students when they were in grades kindergarten through 5. Variation in the demographic data was minimal. This supports using our current students in grades kindergarten through 5 to project anticipated demographics for each of the proposed boundary plans in the 2017-2018 school year.

Demographics in any community are not static, because families move, incomes change and children grow up. Although the district doesn't have data for the younger students who will be entering the system in the next few years, it's a safe prediction that the data will look relatively similar to the current makeup of the student population.

"Do I feel pretty confident that we're not going to have any gigantic shifts in the next two years? Yes," Wakeley said.

Her analysis broke down the numbers by school site and plan for: special education, section 504 (students with disabilities), English Language Learners, students who receive free and reduced lunch, and race/ethnicity. When analyzing the data based on degree of variation in gender as one demographic factor, Wakeley suggested committee members consider each percentage range plus or minus 4 percent as an acceptable margin.

"The goal is not for everything to be equal," Wakeley said. Rather, the committee should consider whether the difference between buildings under the proposed plans is similar to Tahoma's current variance. Out of all the data categories compared, every proposed plan falls within the same range as current figures, with one exception explained below.

In addition to comparing Tahoma's current and predicted ranges in each data category, Wakeley shared information on surrounding school districts.

"How does the variation compare to the variation found in our near neighbors?" she asked.

In looking at the percentages of race and ethnicities, for example, Issaquah has elementary buildings with as few as 1 percent Asian students, and as many as 48 percent. Tahoma's elementary buildings under proposed plans would be similar to the current range of 5 to 13 percent Asian students. Kent's elementary buildings have as few as 2 percent black students and as many as 22 percent. Tahoma's elementary range under proposed plans would be similar to the current range of 3 to 4 percent. Enumclaw's Hispanic student population at the elementary level ranges from 13 to 20 percent. Tahoma's range is 3 to 11 percent Hispanic at elementary buildings, and proposed plans are predicted at similar numbers. Bellevue has elementary buildings with as few as 10 percent white students and as many as 54 percent. Tahoma's elementary buildings currently have 71 to 87 percent white students, and proposed plans show similar ranges. (For all the comparisons for each race and ethnicity, see the presentation at the link below).

In surrounding districts examined, the largest difference between buildings for free and reduced lunch is in Bellevue, where at least one elementary school has 2 percent free and reduced lunch and at least one school at 63 percent free and reduced lunch. Tahoma's elementary schools are currently between 10 and 23 percent free and reduced lunch. Under proposed plans numbers would be similar with one exception: Shadow Lake would be as high as 30-34 percent free and reduced lunch under six of the eight plans (Freckle, Hybrid, Red, Blue, Periwinkle and Plaid).

In comparing English Language Learners, Bellevue again had the largest range of variance, with at least one building at 3 percent and at least one building at 53 percent. Tahoma's range is 3 to 7 percent, and proposed plans are predicted to have similar figures.

On June 1 the committee also:

• Received a map of the Freckle Plan, which was proposed by two community members during the public meetings. To see a map of the Freckle Plan, click here: https://goo.gl/Y62HPY and then follow the directions to select the Freckle Plan layer.
   
• Continued discussion about the five parameters set by the School Board, and how best to rank the proposed plans according to those parameters. For example, they had a lengthy conversation about how to measure whether plans are "doable, affordable and efficient" for transportation purposes. The current plans (Hybrid and Freckle along with the three tabled plans, Red, Blue and Yellow) are very similar in terms of transportation costs, staff said. Committee members and staff decided that if the committee members are able to narrow their choice to one or two plans, transportation staff could run a selection of representative routes from throughout the district for closer comparison on this parameter.
   
• Received tentative start times for the 2017/2018 school year: Tahoma Senior High School, 8 a.m.; Summit Trail Middle School, 8:20 a.m.; Maple Valley Middle School, 8:20 a.m.; Cedar River Elementary, 9:30 a.m.; Glacier Park Elementary, 9 a.m.; Lake Wilderness Elementary, 9 a.m.; Rock Creek Elementary, 9:30 a.m.; Shadow Lake Elementary, 9 a.m.; Tahoma Elementary, 9 a.m. The staggered start times will allow efficient busing and also decrease congestion between Shadow Lake Elementary and Cedar River Elementary.
   
• Said they would like to emphasize several things to the public in addition to all of the above: Students will need to attend school at their assigned elementary, and selecting a daycare close to a different elementary would not necessarily result in a waiver. It's possible the committee could decide to forward more than one plan to the School Board and is making good progress. The committee also wants to preserve the opportunity to reconsider plans that have been tabled.

For the June 1 demographic analysis of the proposed plans, click here:  http://goo.gl/JV78Aj 

To see the questions from committee members and answers from staff, click here: http://goo.gl/HQA1h1 Additional documents, maps and details about the boundary review process can be found here: http://goo.gl/3MzKE3