Some questions will have easy, factual answers. Others will take several months to answer.

In preparation for evaluating its facility usage in 2017 and beyond, South Whidbey School District gathered questions as well as the community’s values and concerns in a future planning meeting Wednesday night in the South Whidbey High School commons.

Turnout was well over 100 people. Attendees submitted questions, some of which will soon be answered on the district’s website while others will be compiled and addressed at a September meeting. The community also learned about the current state of the district, its declining enrollment and limited budget as a result.

Among the dozens of inquiries were consolidating Langley Middle School, merging with the Coupeville School District and using a singular campus in Freeland, what the district’s highest property values are, the reasoning behind the relocation of South Whidbey Academy to the high school, the potential utilization of solar power in all of the district’s owned acreage through grants, renting out kitchen space to caterers and turning the elementary school building into a mini-mall. There were also other non-facility related questions such as if transportation to schools is mandated, shrinking the school week to four days to save on transportation costs and if pickup locations could be centralized.

The meeting was the first of five planned over the next eight months, leading up to a March 2017 board meeting where directors will select a course for the future; it would go into effect in September, 2017. Superintendent Jo Moccia said the meeting was formulated not out of crisis but as an effort to facilitate community conversation as well as information gathering and sharing. It was determined before the meeting that none of the questions would be answered Wednesday night.

Future meetings in 2016 are scheduled for Sept. 21, Oct. 19, and Dec. 7, while the final meeting in 2017 will be Jan. 18. The school board will deliberate on decisions for facilities in a February 2017 workshop and meeting, followed by implementation of the changes in March, 2017.

“I was really happy with the turnout. I thought it was great to have that many people here,” Moccia said. “I thought it was really important to give people a baseline of facts because it allows people to see that there’s a really big picture here.”

Everybody has a point of view, she said, including herself and the school board. The meetings will help the public see that “big picture” and know that the decisions ahead won’t be easy.

Half the battle for Wednesday night was informing the community about the district’s budget limitations and the direct correlation with the district’s declining enrollment since 2000. Assistant Superintendent of Business Dan Poolman presented the 2016-17 budget, which covered everything from the district’s fund types to the challenges it faces. Difficulties for the district included fewer students, a rise in negotiated salary and benefits that are not funded by the state and mandatory benefits such as the teachers’ retirement system.

The information was a lot to absorb in a short period, but it was effective in the eyes of one parent.

“I think it’s important you establish that base education, so I thought that was very good of them to do,” Shelly Ackerman said. “And to keep it to questions because you can get into that back and forth and then you get nothing accomplished.”

Ackerman, who has a son in the 11th grade, values the district’s current facilities and was against closing or selling them.

“I think they shouldn’t get rid of anything because I appreciate that it’s a one-time benefit and then it goes away, and you’ll never get that back,” Ackerman said. “I think they should keep all of it but look for alternatives in the interim for uses for those things and ways to consolidate.”

For seventh-grade parents Patti Schuler and Jamie Zundel, it’s not a question of “if” some facilities will need to be closed or reutilized, but when.

“It is inevitable and hard decisions have to be made,” Zundel said. “It is pretty clear from the information we’ve known before. Our kids were younger when they did the first bond measure. It feels like the can has been kicked down the road and we’re dealing with further issues related to that, from five years ago.”

Zundel and Schuler said they valued programs and teachers over facilities and buildings. Schuler was in favor of consolidating the middle school.

“The sooner that building closes the happier I am,” Schuler said. “I hope they close the middle school and merge the middle school and the high school. I’d rather see programs stay instead of half-empty schools. It makes no sense to me.”

Questions with factual answers, such as whether transportation is mandated, will be provided on the district’s website. What the district cannot readily answer, such as the closure of the middle school, will be added to the deliberation process and included in the list of things the board will need to ponder, Moccia said.

“Expecting answers, that’s going to take time,” Moccia said.

“I just want to encourage people to keep coming to the meetings we have scheduled. The next one is in September. There’s only going to be five of them and then the board is going to have decision making. It’s important people stay involved. I don’t think it’s an overwhelming commitment to ask for five meetings,” she added.