Richland, WA- The Richland School District will see a couple changes for the next school year. After an increase in enrollment in Richland Schools, the school district has decided to make their temporary school, Elementary Eleven an official school.
Back in 2019, Elementary Eleven was built to temporarily house the students from Tapteal Elementary while it underwent renovations.
Currently, it houses students from Badger Mountain because it is also undergoing renovations.
The renovations at Badger Mountain are expected to be completed before the 2022-2023 school year.
Once they are complete, some students from Tapteal and White Bluffs will be sent to Elementary Eleven. Other students from Orchard may be sent to Badger Mountain.
As of now, no students from Wiley will be transfer but if they are, they would be sent to Badger Mountain.
At this time, the name, colors and mascot for Elementary Eleven have not been decide, but the district plans to do so in the near future.
The addition was decided after elementary schools in Richland have surpassed their max capacity.
Some school have even reached middle school capacities.
Ty Beaver with Richland school district says, “Orchard Elementary has more than 700 students and white bluffs has about 800.”
The current map on the district’s website shows where the boundaries are over capacity. Elementary Eleven is right where the overlap is.
Beaver says the map and now been approved and will soon be sent out to the families.
When this goes into effect, students going into middle school or high school will not be affected. These changes are only for elementary schools.
For the students that this will affect, they will have the opportunity to transfer back into the school they are currently enrolled in.
Beaver says, “The district and their schools will be doing outreach to everybody so everybody kind of knows what to expect. Where the boundary lies and how that may affect them or if it doesn’t, so they can make plans if they need to.”
This won’t officially go into affect until the 2022-2023 school year and the transfer requests can begin once their is more information given to the parents.
