BRINNON — Brinnon School District has received a $185,000 grant to replace one of the modular buildings that houses two classrooms.
Construction of the modular building will begin in late spring or early summer 2021, and it will replace the two-room modular building the school uses for special education and pre-school, said Superintendent Trish Beathard.
The kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district applied for the grant in June, and the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) informed it of the grant approval earlier this month.
“We’re super excited to have it,” Beathard said. “I’m excited to have a great place for our students to learn, and we have a great community of great students, and they deserve the very best.
“So we want to provide that, but at the same time be respectful of our taxpayers.”
The current building used by the district was purchased 23 years ago and needs to be replaced, Beathard said.
“It’s at the end of its life,” she said. “So we felt that replacing the double modular would be a reasonable ask.”
The campus currently uses two modular buildings, one which houses one classroom and the other which features the two-classroom building that will be replaced.
Next school year, Beathard anticipates the new modular building will be used for middle school students.
Beathard and her staff have been looking for and receiving various grant funding to upgrade the campus — such as upgrades to the district’s playground over the past two years — to avoid placing more burden on Brinnon taxpayers.
“It’s a good thing to look for grant money — free money — to pay for things that, in lots of places, they’re asking taxpayers to pay for it,” Beathard said. “We’re looking for grant money so we don’t have to ask taxpayers.
“This needed to be done, and we just held off and looked for grants and worked on that whole process, and it worked for us this time.”
Beathard is grateful to OSPI and grant funders for considering small schools.
“Our budget is limited and I appreciate them looking at our needs, and I personally appreciate the willingness of our grant-writing team to go together and do this,” Beathard said.
“It’s just one of the things we do, if money is out there, we sort of say ‘why not Brinnon?’ and we apply.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Zach Jablonski can be reached by email at zjablonski@peninsuladailynews.com or by phone at 360-385-2335, ext. 5.
