COEUR d’ALENE — During a special workshop of the Coeur d'Alene School Board on Monday, Chairman Casey Morrisroe said feedback the board has received regarding the boundary review "could be just the tip of the iceberg."

"That (feedback) mainly came just from our magnet schools for the most part, although there were some middle school and high school in there," he said. "We didn't see much from our nine other elementary schools."

The workshop was held to specifically address the issue of "grandfathering," or boundary transfer exceptions, as the board and the boundary review committee are "eyeball-deep in the re-boundary work," in the words of Coeur d'Alene Superintendent Steve Cook.

Cook said three conversations need to happen in the grandfathering discussion: how secondary schools will be affected in the decision-making, policy work regarding the magnet schools, and what to do about the nine traditional elementary schools that aren't magnet schools.

“For example — and this is a ridiculous example, but let’s start there — if we were to say anybody that wanted to grandfather in our attendance zone schools could choose to do so, how might we handle that?" he speculated. "What all implications would we have to be mindful of to manage that? Not only is it a space issue, but we’re going to try to do our best to get kids where they belong and transport them, and every decision we make regarding grandfathering could have implications on that, but we also know and honor the fact that moving kids from school to school can be a very traumatic and big experience. So we are trying to balance all of those needs with these decisions."

The district's magnet schools, Ramsey and Sorensen, have drawn exceptional attention as the boundary review process moves forward.

Right now, the district doesn't have a locked down policy that governs magnet school processes. Cook said if you go to the next level, "the application process that’s been anchored in the district for quite some time would be the next guiding document."

"On the application, at the top it says, 'Once you’re in, you’re in.' There’s no need to reapply, therefore the consideration for enrollment is all that would be expected from a current student," he said.

The district’s recommendation regarding magnet schools is “that we would honor that,” he said. Each trustee also expressed support of maintaining this practice, which allows students already enrolled in magnet schools to stay where they are after zone changes are made.

The district is also supportive of all students keeping their current schools, Cook said.

"We're supportive of the idea that any school, as best we can, we’d like to make it so once you’re into that school, you can stay into that school, with the exception of once you choice out of your home school, that we can’t guarantee that," he said.

Right now, district policy 3010 "maintains that the district always has the authority to do what it needs to do," Cook said. "I think that covers if we were to have some kind of catastrophic enrollment issue."

Overlays, attendance zones, lotteries and other policies fueled the long magnet conversation.

"We haven't created our own process," Morrisroe said. "There was a reason they created this to begin with here in this district. They didn't just pull it out of a hat.

"There's a lot of anxiety about changing the rules or changing the zones," he continued. "We need to deal with our existing students and where they are before we deal with, 'How are we going to deal with magnet schools in the future?'"

The impact on secondary schools is also something board members and boundary review committee members are considering as the rezoning discussion continues.

"I think secondary schools have a different conversation than the elementary schools, because we are opening a new elementary school and there is going to be shuffling around," Cook said.

Morrisroe said Lake City High School is continuing to grow as Coeur d'Alene High School is slightly decreasing in population, but at the middle schools, "they're basically all overcrowded. They're all at capacity or over capacity, and we're shuffling kids around to where there's open space."

At the boundary review meeting Tuesday night, magnet schools again were a hot issue, but members advanced their work to mapping attendance zones for the traditional schools with the scenario of only overlays for the magnet schools. Magnet schools currently only have overlays.

The committee's first proposal, which was landed upon at the end of the three-hour meeting, will be presented at the first open house next week. The proposal incorporates quite a few changes — some substantial — from the initial springboard proposal used as a starting point.

"This is a dynamic process and a challenging task for the committee members as they strive to find an effective and fair balance of interests," said Coeur d'Alene School District communications director Scott Maben after Tuesday’s meeting. "Tonight we saw innovative ideas flowing across the maps. They tackled how to better distribute student populations and ease school crowding, while still considering the importance of having schools that serve nearby neighborhoods and are easy to reach for students who walk.

“They looked hard at leveling out some inequities between schools and also putting the district in a better position to accommodate future growth and additional new schools in the coming years,” he added. “The proposal also aims to establish a better feeder system of grouping certain elementary schools with a middle school, and then onto high school.”

Skyway Elementary and Lake City High mom Kim Stearns, who is a boundary review committee member, said she feels the committee "really has a common goal to really try to solve the crowded areas and socio-economic areas."

"Everybody really wants to work together," she said. "It's just trying to balance it out. What's really nice is that everybody's represented at a table, people from every school, so we can talk intelligently about it. I don't know that much about Bryan and Borah, but I can talk intelligently about Skyway. It gives us a really good feel all the way around. It's been very positive. I look forward to coming to the meetings."

The first proposal for new attendance zones from the Coeur d'Alene School District Boundary Review Committee is expected to be released for public viewing later this week.

Open houses about Coeur d'Alene attendance zones will be held from 6-8 p.m. Tuesday in the Coeur d'Alene High School commons. Open house No. 2 will be held from 6-8 p.m. Feb. 18 in the Woodland Middle School cafeteria (not Lake City High, as previously planned). Public listening sessions will be conducted at the start and end of the events to listen to families regarding exemptions from transfer (grandfathering) of students, from 5:30-6:15 p.m. and 7:45-8:30 p.m.

Maben said about 100 people watched the live stream of the special board meeting; another roughly 3,000 watched it on social media as of late Tuesday afternoon. About 25 people braved Monday's snows to attend in person.

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Info: www.cdaschools.org

"That clearly indicates there’s a high degree of interest in this conversation, both about the new boundaries and what impact this will have on where students attend school after we implement the new boundaries,” he said.

FLO Analytics, the consulting firm working with the district on mapping the potential zone changes, should have a visual representation for the public to view soon.

"Later this week, hopefully by Friday, we’ll have this stuff out on our website so people can look and see where they are," Maben said.