Superintendent Wendy Dow presented the district’s updated open-enrollment capacity report and explained how the district will read and apply capacity thresholds during the early and final permit windows.

Dow said the district used classroom counts from a boundary and feasibility study to produce a corrected maximum-capacity number for each school and then applies the board-adopted 95% metric for early enrollment. The district projects seats available for the 2026–27 school year by rolling current students forward and averaging kindergarten estimates (a 10-year kindergarten average used by the district’s demographer).

Dow explained the operational timeline: early permits are collected in December, the district will notify families the week after Feb. 6 whether they have been accepted, and principals will receive FTE allocations in March and may close grade-level permits if specific grade sections show capacity constraints. She noted that districts must avoid denying students for reasons such as attendance or parental preference but may deny permits for statutory reasons such as significant discipline histories.

Board members raised questions about grade-level capacity versus building capacity, variance in prior projection spreadsheets (an earlier formula error was corrected), and clarifications on how DLI (dual-language immersion) or special programs affect counts. Staff said the early-enrollment period will open as scheduled and that recommendations about whether to keep all schools open for early enrollment would return to the board at the next meeting.

Next steps: district staff will confirm and publish corrected capacity counts, proceed with the early-enrollment period and return with any recommended closures by grade or school after the February acceptance window.