PORT ANGELES – The School Board will vote on the realignment of the elementary schools, the naming issue for Stevens Middle School, all day kindergarten and the three-year technology plan at the 7 p.m. meeting today at Dry Creek Elementary, 25 Rife Road.
The elementary schools’ proposed new boundaries will be discussed and voted on at the meeting.
The new Port Angeles School District boundaries are a result of the closure of Fairview Elementary School.
Although most of the students from Faiview will move to the Roosevelt campus, the whole district will be realigned to move students from the more crowded campuses on the west side of the district to the eastern side of the district which will have more room.
Roosevelt Middle School will close and all students will move to Stevens Middle School.
The Roosevelt campus will then house elementary students.
The realignment will more evenly distribute students to schools district wide.
The work has been done by the Elementary Transition Team and will be presented and voted on tonight.
Some students at every school will be affected.
The possibility of renaming Stevens Middle School is also up for vote.
The Middle School Transition team along with the School Name Committee narrowed the possibilities to four, which will be presented and voted on by the board.
The top choice of the committee was to leave the name Stevens Middle School.
The second contender was Port Angeles Middle School.
Issac Stevens was the first territorial governor of Washington.
The four names that will go before the board are Stevens Middle School, Port Angeles Middle School, Klahhane Middle School and Pacific Middle School.
The committee – made up of representatives from Roosevelt Middle School, Stevens Middle School, community members who had affiliations with the schools and other community members – was appointed by Superintendent Gary Cohn to evaluate possibilities.
The committee also evaluated how much it would cost to change the name of the middle school.
The most costly part of changing the school name would be sanding and refinishing the gym floor, which now bears a banner of the Stevens Stampeders.
The total cost for the refinishing would be about $10,940, if the district used its own employees.
If it were contracted out, the cost is estimated at $30,495.
Technology renaming costs would be about $1,300 – the salaries of the employees working on it.
Although this is a cost, because systems have to have routing information renamed, it is considered what Cohn called a “sunk cost” because the employees will be working on the systems throughout the transition anyway.
Sign changes would cost about $3,000.
The total cost then, would be about $15,206, assuming the district did the work on the gym floor rather than contracting it out.