New district boundaries for Olympia School Board elections

Olympia School District’s board of directors agreed to new boundaries for its five director districts during a special meeting held yesterday.

Special purpose districts like the Olympia School District must redraw their districts based on the population information from the most recent federal decennial census.

The population within the school district is now 71,071, according to the 2020 census. This is a 9,315 increase from the 2010 census and includes urban growth areas that surround the city limits

Superintendent Patrick Murphy noted that there are only minimal changes to the new boundaries, with adjustments being just “over a block or two in certain places.”

Vice President Darcy Huffman commended the redistricting work. “They took into consideration communities – so that communities would all be in the same district,” she said during the meeting.

Fourth District director Hilary Seidel echoed this sentiment and said, "this will lead to more balanced representation.”

The school district worked with Sammamish Data Systems Inc to redrawthe boundaries. They considered how to divide the 71,000 population so that district election races are as equally distributed as possible.

Each district will have around 14,000 population. The first district will have the most white population at 11,532 while having the least number of non-white or mixed at 2,681.

The fifth district will have the smallest white population at 10,265 while having the biggest number of people of Hispanic origin at 1,311 and the largest number of non-white or mixed at a population of 3,945.

Murphy said the new boundaries would be formally resolved at the next board meeting which is set for Thursday, September 8.

He noted that the redistricting is timely as the board will have to select a new director for the second district as Justin McKaughan resigned on August 31.

They will post the new district boundaries on the district website on September 9 and vote on a new director on October 17.