The Woodway Center is the new name for school opening in September 2021 to serve incoming kindergarteners who live in Edmonds’ Sherwood and Westgate Elementary School boundaries.

Located in southeast Edmonds, the center will open in the former Woodway Elementary School building. It will be the new home to:

• Kindergarten (eight classrooms planned)
  Serves kindergarteners in the Sherwood and Westgate elementary boundaries. Sherwood and Westgate will now have first through sixth graders on campus.
• Developmental Kindergarten (one classroom)
  Serves kindergarteners with disabilities, which may include deficits in language, cognition, social/emotional, speech, and/or motor skills.
• Developmental Preschool (two classrooms)
  Serves children ages 3 to 5 with disabilities. This is a federally funded early learning program.
• ECEAP (two classrooms)
  The Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) is a state-funded early learning program that serves children ages 3 and 4 whose families are income-eligible.

The school day will run from 9:20 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. There will also be before/after school programming operated by the YMCA.

Darcy Becker, the district’s early learning programs manager, will oversee Woodway Center.

Why the Woodway Center? In February 2021, the district’s Capacity Advisory Committee (consisting of parents, teachers, principals, Edmonds Education Association president and district office staff) voted to recommend the district move forward with a kindergarten campus to address overcrowding at Sherwood and Westgate elementary schools. The district also decided to make Woodway Center the home to other early learning programs.

The district said it will ensure Woodway Center builds on classroom environments created at Sherwood and Westgate, with play-based and project-based learning.

The district also promises a building-wide culture that focuses on the needs, interests and developmental stages of kindergarteners. This includes assemblies, outdoor spaces and equipment, materials and curriculum, school-wide events and before- and after-school care.

Adding preschool classrooms to Woodway Center, the district said, will mean that young children are served in proximity to their homes, provide access to a greater number of age-level peers, and better meet the specific learning needs of young children. And it said the additional space at Woodway Center will also mitigate capacity constraints within other elementary schools across the district.