The Edmonds School District announced on Friday that Edmonds’ Woodway Center kindergarten campus, which opened in September 2021, will close in late June.
The center was created after the district’s Capacity Advisory Committee voted in February 2021 to recommend the district move forward with a kindergarten campus to address overcrowding at Edmonds’ Sherwood and Westgate elementary schools. The district also decided to make Woodway Center, located at the former Woodway Elementary School, the home to other early learning programs.
According to an email the district sent to parents Friday, Woodway Center students entering kindergarten for the 2023-24 school year will return to their neighborhood school of either Sherwood Elementary or Westgate Elementary. Preschool programming currently at Woodway Center will move to Alderwood Early Childhood Center (AECC) located in Lynnwood beginning with the 2023-24 school year.
To make space for the kindergarten classes returning to Sherwood and Westgate elementary schools, there will be location changes for some of the district’s special education programs, with those decisions still to be determined, the district said. “That information will be shared with families and staff as soon as the plan is finalized,” the email said.
The goal has always been to return kindergarten students to their neighborhood school, the district said, adding that the center “was a temporary solution to overcrowding at both Sherwood and Westgate. With enrollment projected to be down for next school year, the district has decided to close Woodway Center.”
Those who will be attending school at Sherwood and Westgate next school year will soon hear from their principal about upcoming events to learn about their school.
“We want to thank the staff who opened a welcoming school to some of our youngest learners back in September 2022,” the email said. “They have worked hard over the past two years to create a sense of belonging for all the students and families they serve. We also want to thank the families and most of all, our students, who embraced Woodway Center as their school community.”
Great news. Keep kid’s early learning in their own neighborhood.
The result of this move will be that prof tech’s will teach massive pre-school class sizes at AECC, while Early Childhood Special Ed teachers will be either pushed out or forced to oversee multiple classrooms. In other words, ESD is pushing less qualified individuals to work with our most vulnerable children at their most critical stages simply because they are too cowardly to cut the ever-expanding administrative bloat that plagues every school district in Washington. This is an indictment on Edmonds School District’s values.
This is heartbreaking for my family. We have been here for 2 years and admire and appreciate all the staff. They care for our kids! Fill the kids class rooms to the max?! That’s the real solution? Only the people who say that don’t have kids in the schools. This is horrible. ESD has really let me down this time!