MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District board met Thursday night for a regular meeting to discuss the feedback the district received from parents at Groff Elementary for next year.  

“This is not an easy situation,” MLSD Superintendent Carol Lewis said. “When I talked with the Groff staff about the survey information that we got back, it's clear that in this situation, there's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of differing opinions, and so in the end, something is going to get decided about how we're going to educate our Groff students next year, and it will not be everybody's first choice. It will be upsetting to someone, no matter what we decide.”  

Lewis said the survey, along with other factors, will help district officials decide what the plan is for Groff students for the 2025-26 school year.  

Closure 

Groff Elementary was closed for the rest of the current school year, according to an announcement from Lewis at the March 6 school board meeting. 

The school was originally expected to be closed March 3-7. However, the district decided it was best to close the school for the remainder of the year after more issues were discovered with the construction, according to Lewis. Some of the concerns included safety issues associated with the new campus’s construction. 

Students were kept together in grade levels with respective teachers and moved to other campuses around the district.  

MSLD received an answer from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction that the district can still have the Groff entity because Groff students will be together in classes. 

“We're going to keep Groff students with their Groff teachers, and we're going to keep a Groff principal. So, just because we don't have the physical building, if we keep all of those things, Groff stays Groff, no matter where everybody ends up for the year,” Lewis said. 

Lewis said that because there is still active litigation around Groff with the general contractor, the district has to be careful about information released to the public. 

“We know that lawsuits take a long time. The lawsuit doesn't have to end before we can go back to Groff. It probably will go on longer than the actual fixes do,” Lewis said. “We are working with attorneys to come up with something that doesn't share things that would compromise our legal position, but to share as much as we can with the community, because the community does deserve to know what's going on, but we also don't want to put our taxpayer funds in jeopardy by sharing too much.” 

The district is still working on preliminary investigations on all of the issues surrounding the school, she said. The district hopes to be able to open the school back up for the 2026-27 school year; however, that is dependent on the work being completed to make the campus safe.  

Survey results 

Lewis explained that parents could click one or more of the positives which included transportation, excitement, social integration, new activities or none. Depending on the grade, different positives led the trend but for many parents, their kids seemed excited.  

With the challenge question, parents could also select more than one option, including transportation, upset/worried/anxious, social integration, reduction of activities and no challenges. The leading challenge was transportation and reduction of activities.  

Overwhelmingly, parents said they were not comfortable with their students attending a middle school or high school campus next year. 

The highest response was “very uncomfortable” with 67% of kindergarten parents, 65% of first grade, 45% of second grade, 62% in third grade and 13% in fourth grade. 

Fourth-grade parents were the only toss-up, with 27% of parents being somewhat comfortable, followed by 23% saying they were somewhat uncomfortable.  

The next section will not be broken into grade level; instead, an overall result from all parents. Parents at Groff overwhelmingly chose “my child attending a school with only elementary students” as their top priority, followed by “familiarity with friends and school staff.” 

Of the parents, 50% said they are OK with any elementary school, regardless of distance and 19% said they would prefer closer to home, with middle school and high school being OK.  

Infographics published with this article show the survey's results.

Plans pending 

MLSD has not announced any formal plans for the upcoming school year for Groff students.  

Lewis said the decision for what will happen with Groff students has not been finalized yet; however, by no later than the last day of this school year the district will have a plan in place.  

“We're very hopeful that it will happen prior to that, because there's a lot, there's lots of other things that are dependent on that,” Lewis said.