Board votes to postpone re-opening of Honey Dew Elementary School

Relatively stable student enrollment patterns prompt delay until 2008-09

Jan. 29, 2007—The Renton School Board at their recent meeting voted to delay the re-opening of Honey Dew Elementary School until the 2008-09 school year.

Given the fairly flat enrollment pattern over the past three years in the Hazen High School service area, which includes those students who would potentially attend Honey Dew, district administrators recommended the board continue to delay re-opening Honey Dew for an additional school year, until fall 2008.

For a number of years, Honey Dew had been used to house students from other district elementary schools as those schools were rebuilt from 1994 through 2004. The original plan for Honey Dew, developed by the district Enrollment Review Committee, was to re-open the building g as an elementary school to handle anticipated overloads from Highlands, Maplewood Heights and Sierra Heights elementary schools. But, with lower-than-expected enrollment at those neighboring elementary schools, board members agreed to postpone re-opening for another year, with an analysis of 2007-08 enrollment growth and costs associated with re-opening to be presented to the board next winter.