PORT TOWNSEND — Grant Street Elementary School students will have input into the construction of a new building, according to the school’s principal.
“It’s going to be their school,” said Lisa Condran, who is in her first year at the helm of the school.
“They have a vision about what a new school can do for them and their education.”
The Port Townsend School District is considering placing a $40.9 million bond issue on the Feb. 9 ballot — $28 million of which would be earmarked for the construction of a new school to be located on what is now the school’s athletic field.
The new school would replace a structure built in 1956. Retrofitting the old school is not an option, according to district Superintendent David Engle, who said it would cost less to build a new school than to repair the old building.
The School Board will consider approving the ballot measure at a meeting at 6 p.m. today in the Gael Stuart Building, 1630 Blaine St.
The new school comprises the majority of the requested bond amount. The rest would go toward retrofitting Port Townsend High School for disabled access.
Tentative plans for the new school feature an interior courtyard accessible by all the classrooms, a library that frames the entrance to the courtyard by forming a bridge between two school wings and a layout designed to bring natural light into the building, Engle said.
Condran said that a representative of Integrus Architecture of Seattle, which has done preliminary designs, met with students on Nov. 4 in the school’s gym.
The students rolled out butcher paper and drew what they wanted in the new school.
Those drawings now decorate the school’s front hall.
The construction would come with a reorganization of grades.
Grant Street, which now houses students in preschool through the third grade, would add the fourth and fifth grades.
Blue Heron Middle School would lose the fourth and fifth grades and adopt the traditional middle school configuration of sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
For that reason, students now in kindergarten, first and second grades participated in the Nov. 4 exercise because they would attend the new school if it opens, as hoped, for the 2018 school year.
Some of the student recommendations will be incorporated in the design, while others had already been thought of and placed in the proposal, Condran said.
“They are including new things they would like to see but also things they have now that they want to hang on to,” Condran said.
For instance, the students want to keep their garden and a library. Both would be expanded if the new school is built.
Many wish-list items are practical and even obvious, such as the library, a play area and a cafeteria.
Ones that probably will not make the cut include a candy store with free jelly beans and a swimming pool, the former for common sense reasons and the latter because students currently are given swimming lessons at Mountain View Pool, Condran said.
The Grant Street school now serves about 450 students in the core program, a special needs program and preschool.
If voters approve the funding, the construction would take place while students occupy the current facility.
Once the new school opened, the old one would be demolished.
Bond measures require 60 percent plus one vote for approval.
If voters approve the measure, the property tax levy would begin in 2017.
A fact sheet in today’s agenda packet says that a levy rate of $1.24 per $1,000 assessed property value would be expected to be required for 20 years to finance the bond.
But since property owners now are paying a levy of 54 cents per $1,000 assessed value for a capital improvements levy that will be retired in 2016, the proposal would raise the levy by 70 cents per $1,000 assessed value.
Taking that into consideration, approval of the bond measure would mean that the annual property tax for a $150,000 property would increase by $105, the school district said.
To view the draft plan go to http://tinyurl.com/PDN-new-school.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
