An open letter to Northshore School District

Dear Superintendent Irish and Members of the Northshore School Board,

As a resident of the Moorlands neighborhood in Kenmore for the past 22 years, I am writing to provide constructive feedback regarding the current elementary school consolidation and boundary proposals being evaluated by the Enrollment Demographics Advisory Committee (EDAC).

I understand deeply that managing structural budget deficits, navigating post-pandemic enrollment shifts, and making facility decisions are incredibly difficult tasks. Please know that I approach this issue with genuine empathy for the tough choices you must make to ensure the fiscal health of our district.

While my own children are now in college—one as a senior at the University of Washington and the other as a freshman at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo—my perspective is shaped by over two decades of firsthand experience with this district. Both of my children went entirely through the Northshore School District pipeline, attending Moorlands Elementary, Northshore Middle School, and Inglemoor High School. I maintain a deep, permanent interest in the financial responsibility of our district and the long-term structural stability of our local neighborhoods. Looking closely at the active proposals, the inclusion of Moorlands Elementary in all consolidation scenarios raises significant logistical and fiscal concerns that contradict the district's goals of optimizing operations.

I urge the board to consider the following three factors before taking action:

1. Severe Spatial Imbalance and Overcrowding: Moorlands currently serves a high-density student body of 523 students on a compact 4.96-acre lot. Shuttering or severely fracturing a highly utilized facility of this size to absorb students into smaller enrollment sites (such as Arrowhead at 284 students) introduces immediate classroom configuration crises. Moving over 500 students creates a logistical domino effect that runs counter to regional facility efficiency goals.

2. Taxation Without Neighborhood Benefit: The Moorlands neighborhood has absorbed substantial residential real estate development and increased density over the past several years. This growth has directly expanded the district's property tax base. It is a fundamental mismatch of community growth principles to funnel newly generated property tax revenues from our neighborhood into a centralized district bucket, while simultaneously stripping away the baseline school asset that justified that neighborhood density in the first place.

3. Protection of Sunk Capital Bond Investments: Fiscally, the district faces massive public accountability hurdles if it votes to mothball a facility directly after spending voter-approved tax dollars on it. Taxpayers explicitly approved the February 2026 Capital Projects Bond to fund modernizations, kitchen upgrades, and crucial seismic retrofits specifically for Moorlands Elementary. Closing a facility immediately following dedicated capital safety investments represents an inefficient use of public funds.

Proposed Alternative:
Rather than pursuing facility closures for high-enrollment neighborhood assets like Moorlands, the district should prioritize balanced, comprehensive boundary line adjustments. Shifting boundaries to level out the enrollment distribution across the south end of the district will naturally elevate lower-enrolled schools toward the state's 400-student prototypical funding baseline without incurring the heavy logistical disruptions and secondary transit costs associated with a physical school closure.

Thank you for your time, your transparency during these study sessions, and your continued dedication to the fiscal health of the Northshore School District.

Sincerely,
Jake & Amy Schenkein
Moorlands Residents, Kenmore, WA