YCS to review walker routes for Fort Stevens, Mill Pond elementary schools

As Yelm Community Schools (YCS) continues to explore options to make transportation more efficient, the district has announced it will review student walker routes for Fort Stevens Elementary and Mill Pond Elementary.

While the district would like to find walker routes for students of all elementaries, Chris Woods, YCS Superintendent, said it isn’t safe nor viable to have students trekking to and from McKenna Elementary School, Southworth Elementary School and Lackamas Elementary School.

“You can’t walk to those schools safely. I would not recommend it. We won’t identify walking routes to those buildings because it would be unsafe,” Woods said. “I think what’s important, one of the reasons we look at walker routes, is then we can reduce the number of bus routes needed. We’re always short bus drivers. It’s hard to find bus drivers. If we can reduce the number of routes and have a full driving staff, then that’s helpful at both ends.”

Teri Melone, the district’s director of operations, said that YCS has been working with the City of Yelm in order to gather information about upcoming residential growth in town. Additionally, the district wanted to know what development opportunities are being sought after for residential homes and sidewalks.

“There’s a lot of residential growth in all of our boundary areas,” Melone said. “We are researching, as I mentioned last week, there are a couple companies we identified that we can start working with to determine our student growth ratio and what that will look like. We’ve identified a few groups we’ll reach out to.”

According to Melone, currently Fort Stevens Elementary and Mill Pond Elementary are the only two kindergarten through fifth grade schools in the district that have walker routes for students.

“This opportunity is for us to bring this to the public, to share what those (walker route) areas are and if there’s any concerns or thoughts, the community can share those with us,” Melone said. “Then, we can determine whether that’s still a safe walking area.”

Melone said there’s very little room for growth with walker routes at Mill Pond Elementary — especially considering the close proximity of state Route 507.

“We never ask the students to cross over the freeway, the main highway,” Melone said. “That is part of our walker route for the middle school but not the elementary. As you see the growth, there’s a small community that’s coming straight out from Mill Pond, but there’s no sidewalk and no connecting sidewalk.”

The director of operations added that YCS will take a look at how construction within the City of Yelm will affect members of the district. With roundabouts slated for the intersections of East Yelm Avenue and Bald Hill Road Southeast, Bald Hill Road Southeast and Morris Road Southeast, and state Route 507 and Walmart Boulevard, the district will monitor any adjustments needed for bus routes.

Melone believes the addition of those roundabouts within the district’s boundary will eventually help alleviate traffic congestion near Prairie Elementary School — which currently faces post-school congestion.

She added there is no anticipation from the City of Yelm, at this time, to construct additional sidewalks for YCS to develop more walker routes for students.

Woods believes that walker routes and bus routes will be a topic of discussion moving forward for YCS. He said the district has already taken a look at boundary adjustments in order to take some pressure off of Southworth Elementary School.

“If you’re taking pressure off of Southworth, there’s really only three schools you can move students to,” Woods said. “That’s Fort Stevens, Mill Pond and Prairie. Well, those happen to be the three areas that Teri talked about with growth. For us to move students from Southworth to those three schools would not make sense given the growth.”

Woods noted that YCS will also monitor how many new students will be produced district-wide from the growth taking place near its schools.

“That’s going to be a conversation for us going forward. We currently do not have the ability to pass a bond,” Woods said. “So as you’re thinking about higher enrollment, we currently do not have a huge capital fund so as enrollment grows and growth occurs, you’ve got other challenges as far as how we accommodate the students.”