COEUR d’ALENE — In the conversation of school boundaries and what changes will be made in the Coeur d’Alene School District next school year, the subject of “grandfathering,” or exempting students from transfer, has frequently been a concern.

Families want to know where their children will go once the attendance zones have been moved. Will they stay at their current school? Will they go to the same school as their older siblings? If their parents are employed at a school outside their zone, will they still be able to attend the school where Mom or Dad work? And what about the magnet schools?

District officials initially addressed these grandfathering concerns during a workshop Jan. 13 and heard more from the community Jan. 21 during the first public open house on the boundary review process.

Although it’s not clear yet exactly how the changes will be implemented, Superintendent Steve Cook prepared a grandfathering of students priority list as a starting point that was examined by Coeur d’Alene School Board trustees during the monthly meeting Monday night.

“This is our estimation of a prioritization along with what we thought we heard from groups about potential candidates that might be impacted, and some mechanism to identify them,” Cook said. For example, he said, fifth-graders who have been at one elementary school their entire academic career would more than likely be in favor of finishing their elementary experience at that one school.

With the new Northwest Expedition Academy school being built across U.S. 95 from its old site, that too has raised questions.

“We know we’ve made some commitments to the students at NExA,” Cook said. “If they wanted to choose to go to the new school but were out of zone” that would be a part of that discussion.

In 2016, the board approved continued enrollment of current out-of-district students and their siblings, Cook said, but has since stopped enrollment of new out-of-district students.

“If we missed one and there are groups out there that we haven’t captured, we’re absolutely open to including them,” Cook said.

The full list of the starting-point priorities and how they are ranked can be viewed on the school’s website, www.cdaschools.org, in the Feb. 3 meeting packet.

The Coeur d’Alene School District Boundary Review Committee was not tasked with addressing this issue. The board will make all decisions about the possibility of allowing some students to remain at their current schools when the boundaries change.

No formal decisions have yet been made.

Board members will hold more listening sessions about grandfathering during the next open house, which will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 18 at Woodland Middle School.