Oak Harbor School District to Review and Potentially Redraw Elementary Boundaries

Applicants have until Wednesday, Feb. 25 to join the Boundary Review Community Partners Team as Oak Harbor Public Schools opens a formal review of attendance boundaries for its five elementary schools to respond to declining enrollment and protect the district’s long-term finances. The district announced the process on Feb. 24, 2026 and is recruiting volunteers who live within the district’s attendance boundaries.

“The Boundary Review Community Partners Team will work with District staff and consultants over approximately five evening meetings between March 2026 and May 2026 to develop a recommendation for School Board consideration in late May/June 2026,” the district newsletter to families states, laying out a compact spring schedule for the community panel and district staff.

The district newsletter also sets the implementation timeline: “This timeline will provide families approximately one full year to prepare for implementation of any approved boundary changes in the 2027-28 school year.” That language signals the earliest possible start for any changes approved by the School Board and gives families about a year to adjust before the new school year.

Oak Harbor School District is working with education consulting firm Teater Crocker to project enrollment and facilitate the review, and district leaders are pointing to uneven enrollment trends as the driver. “Projecting enrollment is difficult, Kuss-Cybula explained, because the number of students actually in attendance is never known until they show up,” the Whidbey News-Times reported, and the paper noted “significant enrollment declines are currently expected for kindergarten through fourth grade and grades nine through 12,” while enrollment is anticipated to remain steady at the intermediate and middle schools.

Funding pressure framed the move at the district level. “State funding a school receives fluctuates as its enrollment does, but as Superintendent Michelle Kuss-Cybula stressed at Monday’s board meeting, the school district has already dealt with insufficient funding the last five years.” The discussion included a wider critique of state budget proposals, with Reykdal saying, “Budgets are a statement of values. While the governor and nearly all legislators committed to supporting our public schools when they ran for office, those values are not reflected in these budget proposals.”

A Whidbey News-Times article by Allyson Ballard published at 1:30 a.m. Feb. 24 included a map from the district’s website showing the elementary schools, and the paper reported that “A team of community members living within the district’s attendance boundaries will meet periodically this spring to develop a recommendation for the school board.” The district newsletter and Whidbey’s reporting together provide the application deadline and the timetable but do not list the names or current enrollments of the five elementary schools; the district’s full “Dear Oak Harbor Families” message contains the formal application instructions.

School Board consideration is expected in late May or June 2026, after the Boundary Review Community Partners Team completes its roughly five-meeting workplan between March and May. If the board approves boundary changes, families would have until the start of the 2027-28 school year to prepare.