PORT TOWNSEND — With a few boxes still stacked and unpacked, Jefferson County’s Peninsula College students found a new home for classes this week when they entered Fort Worden State Park’s old schoolhouse.
“Everybody’s been a good sport about the chaos,” a smiling but tired Deborah Johnson said Monday after a weekend of moving into the white schoolhouse just north of The Commons at Fort Worden.
Johnson is the college’s dean of Jefferson Education Services.
The new computer lab, with 16 computer stations, was already being used by students Monday afternoon.
The Port Angeles-based community college serves 485 students in Jefferson County this quarter, said Johnson.
Merging eight into one
The move consolidates eight different Jefferson County college learning spaces into one, said Johnson, but the Port Hadlock office on Patison Street and the Port Townsend Marine Science Center will remain in use by small numbers of students.
The state park, the college and the city of Port Townsend used “a lot of conscious conscientiousness” to move the college from its classrooms in the Waterman & Katz Building, 101 Quincy St.
College officials said growing enrollment had outgrown the 4,200 square feet it occupies in the downtown building.
The college’s lease for the Waterman & Katz Building expired in July.
