The Issaquah School District encompasses six jurisdictions – King County, Bellevue, Issaquah, Newcastle, Sammamish and Renton. The Issaquah School District only does business with two of them – Issaquah and Sammamish.

Many years ago when trying to get school impact fees for Issaquah schools, Renton City Councilman Randy Corman suggested that all jurisdictions meet to get general questions answered and the cities could work with the district to get specific questions answered. One of our current Issaquah board members vetoed that idea saying, “Renton may sabotage the meeting. We don’t like Renton.”

In January 2005, the school board and City of Renton staff members met at Liberty for a meeting to consider “mutual concerns.” That was the only time the school board met with Renton officials.

I sent a note to the School Board asking when they would be meeting with officials from Bellevue or Newcastle or Renton or KC.

This is the response I got:

The Board does contact other jurisdictional councils/boards to seek meetings to talk about topics of mutual interest. Sometimes, due to busy schedules, it may not happen with the routine frequency that we’d like; however, we do keep trying and certainly work on specific issues individually as/if the need arises. Our last meeting with the City of Newcastle council was in May 2008, so we will likely be meeting again with them in the spring. We are working on a date with Renton, but they were quite involved this fall and asked to wait until after the first of the year to consider possible dates.

There is no mention of meeting with Bellevue officials. I guess the School Board doesn’t like Bellevue or Renton. The same goes with King County officials.

Just like the board/administration doesn’t want to do anything more with the Liberty attendance area, they want to ignore the government jurisdictions that are within our “sphere of influence.”

Claudia Donnelly

Renton

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