DV-19-00001 Marian Meadows Development Agreement

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Lindsay Ozbolt October 30, 2019 Page 3 enrollment number includes just 32 grade 9-12 students. Grade 9 is the District's largest, with 14 students. Trends in District Enrollment and Future Projections The numbers above paint a striking picture of the District's enrollment relative to its small district status, and show the District's enrollment is shrinking as a whole. In the last five school years, beginning in 2014-15, the District's enrollment has been 114, 119, 119, 110, and now 112, respectively. While only minimal, the fact that the District's enrollment has shrunk at all in spite of the volume of new homes being built supports ERLC's conclusion that the District's funding is not in jeopardy. Given the apparent trend towards less enrollment, years after the FEIS was finalized, it is fair to assume that the Marian Meadows project will actually add fewer than the 53 students assumed by Ordinance 2018-006. Some alternatives in the FEIS estimate that Marian Meadows will add less than 40 students. As a result, mitigation on a per household basis (i.e. mitigation paid for many units in Marion Meadows that will never generate a single student at the District) will provide an even greater windfall to the District even beyond the novelty of mitigation moneys to the District that this project is subject to. The enrollment projections from Washington's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OPSI) confirm that enrollment in the Easton School District is expected to stay the same or decrease through 2024. The District's own projections differ drastically from this, indicating +48 to +83 students, but the last five years have demonstrated that OPSI, not the District's independent consultant, is correct, even with the additional residential development built in the past years. Conclusion The District would need roughly 30 additional 9-12 students alone before the +/- 60 student tipping point discussed above is met. The District's own 2018 Capital Facilities Plan indicates that the high school has a capacity of 99, fully three times more than its current 9-12 enrollment. While the District is planning for a new elementary school, the numbers do not support charging ERLC for this under the guise of its proportional impacts. Marian Meadows will not significantly, or even minimally, affect the District's ability to fund its classrooms. Easton School District's History of Inaction The District has never before asked a development to pay for the proportionate impact of the students it may add to the District's enrollment total. To the extent that the District is concerned its capital facilities are at a tipping point; this is an existing situation and not attributable to Marian Meadows alone. If the District had participated in review of the below development proposals—if the District had accepted $500 per household from the below developments—there would significant funding available to address the District's concerns. 2007 – Snocadia Development, 230 lots (later cancelled, without input from District) JOHNS-I\I ONROE•MITSUNAGA-KOLOUSKOVA • PLLC