Clover Park School Board Director Districts Could Be Changing

Clover Park School District’s school-board director boundaries could be changing next year.

Board members discussed the proposed changes, based on 2010 Census data, at their meeting Monday evening at district headquarters.

“We needed to see where schools were located in impacted areas,” Superintendent Debbie LeBeau said in regard to the prospect of changes first being mentioned in July.

According to the Census, the district lost 5,479 people. A substantial number of the lost came from the 4th District, which is comprised of , and and .  

District 2 grew by approximately 350 people, and the other three districts lost minimal population.

As a result, there is a disproportionate distribution of the population among the five director districts.

The proposed changes would move Oakwood (currently District 2) and and (both currently District 3) to District 1. Heartwood and would move from District 1 to District 4. That would result in an “ideal population” of 15,393 residents in each district.

Board member Marty Schafer, who represents District 4, expressed concern that the changes would result in his district having a disproportionate number of students on Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“The military influence perhaps (would) take away from some of the others,” he said.

But board vice president , who represents District 2, said that in a city with such a heavy military influence, the only way to alleviate such problems is to have an at-large position on the board.

Jacobs would love to see more JBLM residents voting, but said that there are some obstacles present.

“Getting even one spouse to transfer their registration to (Pierce County) is a challenge,” she said.

According to state law, school districts have eight months from the receipt of Census data to develop a plan for adjusting school-board director district boundaries to balance the population within each district. Each district must consist of geographically contiguous areas and be as compact as possible.

Next up for CPSD is a public hearing, and if approved by the board, the changes will take effect with the September 2012 elections.

The last district-director realignment was in 2002 based on data from the 2000 Census, at which time Sammamish DataSystems was contracted to analyze the data and recommend adjustments. The same company made the suggestions for the 2012 boundaries.

Also at Monday’s meeting, LeBeau announced that the district is conducting a telephone community perception survey among community members regarding impressions and opinions of CPSD.

Community members are encouraged to take a few minutes to complete the anonymous, 35-question survey done in partnership with Pacific Market Research. The calls are expected between Sept. 28 and Oct. 9. The survey is expected to take less than 15 minutes to complete.

CPSD conducts such a survey every two years as part of the district’s accountability plan under the school board’s priority of communication and public relations.

“We want to make sure the community knows about it,” LeBeau said.