ANALYSIS · SCHOOLS

Kirkland Keeps Building. The School District Is Still Planning for Fewer Students.

Our reading of the record. The facts are sourced, and the conclusions are ours. About our labels

Kirkland is adding homes faster than its growth target calls for, while our school district plans for about 4,450 fewer students by 2035 and weighs closing schools.

In short:

On October 14 the Lake Washington School District told its boundary committees to draw new boundaries around permanent classrooms, with each school 80% to 90% full. Every region was told to expect that one or more of its schools could close. On October 20 the superintendent wrote that he believes the district will need to close one or more schools.
The main driver is fewer babies. Births to district families fell from a peak of 2,628 in 2015-16 to 2,084 in 2023-24.
New housing won't make up the difference. Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish and Woodinville added about 12,360 homes from 2020 to 2026, and nine in ten were in buildings of two or more homes, mostly apartments, which house very few school-age children. The district's forecaster says plainly that more housing "is not likely to offset" the decline.

In this article:

Will a school close?
How full are Kirkland's schools?
Why are there fewer students?
Doesn't new housing bring more kids?
Where are Kirkland's new homes going?
What if you moved here for the schools?
Could the forecast be wrong?
Our view
What happens next

Will a school close?

The district's third online information session, on October 14, was blunter than anything said in August. New attendance boundaries will be drawn on permanent capacity, meaning classrooms inside actual school buildings. The district's 157 portables don't count. The committee's instruction is to draw boundaries so each school uses 80% to 90% of its permanent space. Each school community "should expect some degree of change," one slide said, and each region should expect that "one or more schools in their region could be closed." Back in August, closure was just one option on a list the district would evaluate, and now every region has heard it could happen there.

On October 20, Superintendent Jon Holmen answered a question he says he has been asked. "My direct answer to that question is, yes, I believe we will need to close one or more schools to align enrollment across the district," he wrote in an October 20 letter. He also said "there are no predetermined outcomes."

The next day's session, "Implications for Doing Nothing," looked at what happens if every school stays open and every boundary stays put. Many school costs don't fall when enrollment does. The district puts the fixed cost of one elementary school, for the principal, office, custodians, utilities and library, at $1.56 million to $2.15 million a year. The state pays per student, and local levy money fills in the rest, but "Levy authority is capped per student, and LWSD is at the cap." As enrollment falls, so does the district's levy authority.

Associate Superintendent Barbara Posthumus put a number on it. A decline of more than 4,400 students over ten years, she said, means about $52 million less revenue in today's dollars. The district would need about 200 fewer teachers, which saves about $31 million and leaves "still a shortfall of $21 million." That's a much bigger number than the one we reported in August, when the district's budget accounting tied about $2.8 million of a $26.9 million, four-year shortfall to enrollment loss. As we read it, the difference is mostly time. The October figure looks ten years out, after the full decline. Staff added that the district has already cut about $15 million over the last couple of years. If class sizes alone had to cover the gap, the deck shows averages of 29 to 35 students in grades 4 and 5, and up to 39 in high school. Holmen called that the far end of the range.

The district hasn't named a school for closure. "No decisions have been made to close a school," Holmen said in the session. He expects the reasons behind any closure recommendations to come out in December, at public open houses.

Construction plans are being reconsidered too. The superintendent has asked staff to evaluate rebuilding Kamiakin Middle School, funded by the 2024 levy, with less permanent space than planned.

How full are Kirkland's schools?

The district splits itself into four regions, each named for its high school: Juanita, Lake Washington, Redmond and Eastlake. Two of them, Juanita and Lake Washington, cover most of Kirkland and reach a little way into Redmond. Here's how full the district projects each region's schools will be in 2035, measured against permanent space.

Projected for 2035:

Lake Washington region: elementary 90%, middle 74%, high school 93%
Juanita region: elementary 86%, middle 69%, high school 86%
Redmond region: elementary 65%, middle 60%, high school 74%
Eastlake region: elementary 72%, middle 64%, high school 64%

These October figures split each region by school level. Our August article used the district's earlier figures for all grades together, so the numbers aren't the same.

Kirkland's elementary and high schools sit at or just above the district's target. Most of the empty space is to the east. The exception close to home is middle school, where Kamiakin is projected at 66%, Kirkland Middle at 70% and Finn Hill at 71%.

The district's report names six schools that are over their permanent capacity right now. Four are in Kirkland: Lakeview Elementary (115%), Bell Elementary (105%), Frost Elementary (103%) and Lake Washington High School (102%). The other two, Rush Elementary (109%) and Redmond High (115%), have Redmond addresses.

These capacity numbers use the district's own planning averages of 23 students per elementary classroom, about 30 in middle school and 32 in high school. Some families have read them as a move toward smaller classes. We listened to the October 12, 14 and 21 sessions, and none of them says that.

Why are there fewer students?

Mostly births. The superintendent's October 20 letter calls declining birthrates "a primary driver of overall enrollment decline."

From 2011-12 through 2016-17, families living in the district had about 2,561 babies a year. The number fell almost every year after that and reached 2,084 in 2023-24, the latest year counted. That's about a fifth fewer than the peak, and those smaller classes are arriving in kindergarten now. Last fall's kindergarten class, 1,762 children, was the smallest in the forecast's records.

Fewer of those babies also end up in district kindergartens. Before the pandemic, 91 of every 100 children born to district families enrolled five years later. Now it's 76. The forecast doesn't say where the rest went. A family might move away, choose private school or homeschool, and the number counts them all together.

Doesn't new housing bring more kids?

Not many, and it depends on the kind of home. Kirkland added about 5,240 homes between 2019 and April 2026, by state estimates. Its growth target is 13,200 new homes by 2044, and by our math the city is running about 42% ahead of an even pace. (Being ahead on total homes isn't the same as being ahead on affordable ones. Kirkland is well behind on those, and our housing target article covers that gap.)

The district's forecaster, FLO Analytics, counted the students living in every home built in the district from 2015 through 2024. The averages, in K-12 students per home:

Detached house: 0.529
Townhome: 0.353
Apartment: 0.058

Condos and duplex-to-fourplex homes fall in between. Put simply, that's about one student for every two new houses, and one for every seventeen new apartments.

Our August article used a different set of rates, from the district's capital plan (0.746 per house, 0.199 per townhome or plex, 0.069 per apartment). The two studies count in different ways, and FLO's puts townhomes much closer to houses. Both put houses first and apartments last.

Detached houses were 29% of the 14,931 new homes FLO counted, and they hold 73% of the students living in new homes.

As of fall 2025, Kirkland had about 2,600 homes under construction, planned or proposed: about 2,350 apartments or condos, about 230 townhomes and just under 50 detached houses. Apply FLO's rates and all 2,600 add up to roughly 250 students, spread across thirteen grades. That's our arithmetic, and it's approximate. The district's middle forecast loses about 4,450 students by 2035. FLO reaches the same conclusion, writing that "more housing is not likely to offset overall enrollment decline."

The pattern holds across the district. Kirkland is one of the four main cities in the district, and each has a housing target for 2019 to 2044 under the King County Countywide Planning Policies. The yearly figures are our math from the state's housing estimates for April 2020 to April 2026. "Multi-unit" means buildings with two or more homes. The state counts townhomes as single-unit homes, so they're in the other group.

The four main cities in the Lake Washington School District:

Kirkland: target 13,200 homes. Needs about 528 a year, has added about 756 a year. 87% of new homes in multi-unit buildings.
Redmond: target 20,000 homes. Needs about 800 a year, has added about 1,080 a year. 96% of new homes in multi-unit buildings.
Sammamish: target 2,100 homes. Needs about 84 a year, has added about 74 a year. 12% of new homes in multi-unit buildings.
Woodinville: target 2,033 homes. Needs about 81 a year, has added about 150 a year. 97% of new homes in multi-unit buildings.

City lines and school regions don't match exactly. Parts of Sammamish are in the Issaquah School District, and only a small part of Woodinville is in Lake Washington's. The comparison is by city because that's how the targets and the state's counts are kept.

Together the four district cities added about 12,360 homes in six years. About 1,270 of them were houses or townhomes. The rest, nine in ten, were in apartment, condo and plex buildings.

Line those numbers up against the school forecast and you see the same thing at both ends. Redmond has added more homes than any of the four, almost all in apartment and condo buildings, and the Redmond region is projected to have the emptiest elementary schools in 2035, at 65%. Sammamish has added the fewest and is mostly houses. Its target was set at 2,100 in 2022 to reflect its sewer capacity, and the Eastlake region, which serves the district's part of Sammamish, is projected at 72%. So the city adding the most homes and the city adding the fewest both have schools projected well below the district's target.

Districtwide, FLO counted about 5,800 homes under construction, planned or proposed as of fall 2025. About 88% are apartments or condos, 10% townhomes and 2% detached houses. Applying FLO's rates, we estimate they'd add about 560 students, against a forecast decline of about 4,450.

Townhomes are the type to watch, since per home they house about six times as many students as apartments. In May the City Council voted 7-0 to prohibit new townhomes and other ground-level homes in most of the NE 85th Street station area's mixed-use zones. On October 20 a clear majority asked staff to rework the floor area and lot coverage rules for middle housing, so a lot favors several smaller homes over fewer big ones, and sent the work to the Planning Commission. Nothing has been adopted yet.

The school impact fee shows the same thing from another angle. When a new home is permitted in Kirkland, the city collects a one-time fee on the district's behalf to pay for classroom space that growth creates. In the capital plan the district adopted June 22, that fee comes to $5,874 for a single-family house larger than two bedrooms and $0 for townhomes, plexes, apartments and condos, because the property taxes those homes will pay toward school bonds outweigh the cost of seats for the few students they bring. Kirkland collects the fee under its own 2025 schedule: $7,277 for a detached house and $170 for each attached home. Any change to it goes through the City Council. Districtwide averages don't help a full building, though. Lakeview, Bell and Frost elementaries are over capacity right now, and every new family in those attendance areas adds to a crowded school.

Where are Kirkland's new homes going?

Mostly into schools that are already full. FLO highlights four large Kirkland projects expected in the next one to five years, and three of them land in attendance areas that are over capacity now. Polaris at Totem Lake (442 apartments) and Kirkland CKC (121 townhomes) are both in Bell Elementary's area. Slater Mixed Use (486 apartments) is in Frost's. The fourth, KINECT Totem Lake (484 apartments), is in Muir Elementary's area.

A low rate per home still adds up when more than 500 homes land in one school's area. In August, district staff told the board that a new apartment development in Bell's attendance area was already bringing in enough students that preschool classrooms would likely have to move out of Bell next fall.

So Kirkland gets both trends at once. Schools are filling where the apartments are going, while the district as a whole shrinks, mostly to the east.

What if you moved here for the schools?

Plenty of Kirkland families chose a house because of the school it was zoned for. Boundary changes are coming either way. The district has told every school community to expect some change. A street that's been in one attendance area for twenty years may not be in it in 2028.

Kirkland's position cuts both ways. Its elementary and high schools are near or over target, so the district's numbers point east first, where most of the empty seats are. Its three middle schools are another matter. All sit below the 80% floor, and the district has said every region could lose a school. But relieving Lakeview, Bell and Frost, plus Rush just over the line in Redmond, means moving some students out of those schools.

Could the forecast be wrong?

Forecasts miss. In August, district staff told the board that this fall's kindergarten class looked likely to come in a little above FLO's projection. The forecast also has births rising again from the 2023-24 low, though never back to the old levels. Next door, Bellevue closed two elementary schools in 2023. Its enrollment then leveled off and started to rise, and in October 2025 the Bellevue School District said it was no longer considering closing a middle school. Buildings sized for 2035 will still be standing in 2060.

None of that changes the next several years, though. The smaller classes are already born, and every forecast scenario the district published, including the high one, ends with fewer students than today.

Our view

This section is Cherish Kirkland's analysis.

The district is right that births drive most of this, and births aren't something a city council controls. The mix of homes is something it does control. The district's forecast now shows, home by home, which kinds of housing bring children into Kirkland's schools and which don't. We'd like the city to use that when it plans where growth goes, and we'd like the district at the table when it does. Families who came to the Eastside to raise children want to know there will be homes their kids can afford here, and a neighborhood school for the next family on the street.

What happens next

Session #5, "Decision Making Process," is online Wednesday, October 28 at noon. Sessions on supporting students during change, choice schools and specialized programs, and common questions follow on November 4, 9 and 18. The October 21 session recording is posted.

The boundary committees have met once. The superintendent says they'll share what they're weighing at public open houses planned for early December. A final recommendation is expected in March 2027, and any changes take effect in September 2028.

Recordings and join links are at lwsd.org/realignment. Questions go to BoundaryCommittee@lwsd.org.

Our August article explains how the process works, who decides what, and which steps never reach a board vote.

Sources & public records

Last updated: October 2026.

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