Medical Lake Schools to partner with local Parks Department

Starting in the fall, Medical Lake School District teachers will have a one-hour late start release time on Friday mornings to give them additional work and collaboration time.

One of the concerns for this was to create a place for younger students to go if they cannot be at home because their parents have to work in the morning. Part of this was solved for students living at Fairchild Air Force Base as the Youth and Child Development centers will be open earlier on Friday mornings.

For students living in Medical Lake, the school district is getting some help on that front from the local Parks and Recreation Department.

The school district and the department is launching a pilot before-school program on Friday mornings at Hallett Elementary this fall.

Mayor John Higgins and Ashlee King, Parks and Recreation director, met with Superintendent Tim Ames to discuss the bare bones of the program. Although the details are still being worked out, King said the program will focus on providing activities and breakfast for students. She will work with Hallett Principal Cindy McSmith on the program’s week-to-week operations.

“This will benefit families with a lack of options for kids,” King said.

The pilot program is the latest collaboration between the school and city as Parks and Recreation currently uses the school’s buildings for many of its activities throughout the year.

Earlier this year, Higgins was instrumental in helping the district acquire a school resource officer.

“It’s been a fantastic year, we’ve built all of these partnerships with the community,” Ames said. “From local groups like Dollars for Scholars to the food bank, and now the city. We’re creating partnerships and looking at what we can do to increase programs available for kids.”

In addition to helping the school, Higgins sees the pilot program as a way to extend Parks and Recreation’s own programs.

“We also want to extend programming into the middle school,” Higgins said. “We want to have stuff for kids to do. We try and do a lot with the school district.”

King said she met with Parks Committee members Laura Parson and John Paikuli, who were both supportive of the project.

“They were curious and had some questions as it’s a pilot project, but they don’t see it as an issue for the city,” King said.

The school district will gather community input on the program throughout the year. If successful, it could lead to a future before-and after-school program.

“We’d like to see before and after school programs in the future,” Ames said. “Hallett has after-school sports and math programs but there isn’t much to offer for the kindergarteners through third-graders.”

Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].