SEQUIM — Marylaura Ramponi of Sequim gave a $500,000 check to Sequim School District on Oct. 17 — on what would have been her husband Louie’s 89th birthday — to begin the process of designing phase one of a vocational center at Sequim High School.
She plans to give another $500,000 on her birthday, March 28, 2025, to finalize her $1 million commitment made in July for the naming rights to the center. It will be called the Ramponi Center for Technical Excellence.
Ramponi presented the first donation to Sequim School District superintendent Regan Nickels at the Sequim Masonic Lodge’s coffee hour. Ramponi, sitting with her husband’s personalized lodge mug, said Louie was a longtime Mason.
“I’m excited because I think I’m doing something good,” she said. “We chose to live here and I’m able to help. Lord knows we need this building.”
Nickels said Ramponi’s donation will help the center be part of a “new imagining of what Sequim High School’s campus can really be.”
The center’s first phase will be about $4.05 million with a 10,000-square-foot building with classroom space and two large open bays for industrial grade training on site for automotive and construction, said Ned Floeter, director of Sequim School District’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) program.
The school district received nearly $5 million from state legislators in the 2024 supplemental budget for the project. It was initially imagined as a $15 million to $17.5 million facility.
Floeter said with Ramponi’s donation, the district can move forward with designing and engineering while starting on the permitting process for the project.
Nickels said in July that Ramponi’s donation will allow the school district to begin portions of the construction phase apart from the grant funding cycle.
Crews will tentatively break ground next spring or summer and complete it about a year later, Floeter said. He continues to apply for grants to purchase equipment for the building.
School board staff said the center’s phase I is not tied financially to bond options the school district is considering.
Ramponi committed the funds on July 15 at a school board meeting during which board members unanimously accepted the donation.
Prior to moving to Sequim, she and Louie owned and operated a television store in Sonoma, Calif., that they later sold to pursue their love of travel.
In the 1990s, they invested in Sequim real estate and bought for themselves in the area in 1999 before immediately heading out to spend time in Alaska.
Ramponi said Louie valued vocational work. Following his death in 2013, she wanted to help students who are considering trades. She connected with friend and financial adviser Phil Castell, who helped her develop trade school scholarships along with the donation to the vocational center.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
