TACOMA - The tiny Hazelmere School District is no more, but its one-room, 79-year-old elementary school on the Colville Indian Reservation still lives.
The state Board of Education has voted to dissolve the district but then declared the Hazelmere School remote and necessary. At midnight June 30, Hazelmere School District No. 60 will be dissolved.
It will be annexed to the Inchelium School Distict, as recommended by the Regional Commmittee on School District Organization. There was no debate, and the vote on the motion was unanimous.
But the Hazelmere School, the last of seven day schools built by the federal government in the early 1900s, will continue to operate. The bright red schoolhouse and two outbuildings, located in a meadow high above Lake Roosevelt in southern Ferry County, will be allowed to operate under state law that permits schools situated outside of recognized districts when they are ``remote and necessary.''
Current enrollment at Hazelmere, which serves students from kindergarten to the sixth grade, is only 11 students. A study by the staff showed average busing time to Inchelium from homes of the Hazelmere students would be 1 1/2 hours. Busing time to the Hazelmere School is less than 30 minutes.
The new arrangement means only that administrative and purchasing functions now borne by the Hazelmere District will be assumed by the Inchelium District. But there will be some cost to the taxpayers. The board's staff estimates the state allocation under the remote-and-necessary designation for the Hazelmere School will be about $16,000 a year.
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