PORT TOWNSEND — The largest portion of a bond measure planned to be put before voters in the Feb. 9 special election would fund replacement of Grant Street Elementary School, according to the Port Townsend School District’s superintendent.
“We need to build a school for the future,” Superintendent David Engle said.
“This school is about 60 years old,” Engle said, and was built in “a ‘California dreaming’ style with skylights and poor roofing and slab construction. And it has never had a cafeteria.”
Funds also would go toward making the high school compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act by installing two elevators and reconfiguring entrances and exits to accommodate wheelchairs.
The high school also would gain a main entrance that would increase campus security, Engle said.
The School Board has not decided how much to ask voters to approve.
Cost projections will be presented at the next School Board meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Gael Stuart Building, 1610 Blaine St.
“We don’t know what the numbers will be,” Engle said. “It’s all astrology at this point.
“But if they tell us it will cost $40 million to build a new school, we’ll send them back to the drawing board.”
The amount of the bond measure request will be finalized in the next two months, Engle said.
The deadline for submitting a ballot measure to the Jefferson County Auditor’s Office for the Feb. 9 election is Dec. 11.
Grant Street Elementary, which was built in the late 1950s or early 1960s, has a main building and several temporary classrooms and outbuildings, housing about 450 students in the core program, a special needs program and preschool.
The main building and the temporary classrooms have a combined area of about 40,000 square feet.
Engle said the target goal for a new school would be about 60,000 square feet, but that depends on cost projections.
He said the new building would probably be constructed on the current athletic field, a raised area behind the current school.
After the new building was completed, the students would be moved into it and the old one would be demolished.
The earliest possible time for the new building’s opening would be the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, he said.
The Grant Street school facility is pushed to the limit, said Principal Lisa Condran.
New space has been found by shifting around the old, she said.
This year, the school added a fifth kindergarten class. That required moving the reading room into the location used by the staff lounge, which was relocated to the food service room.
Students now eat in the hall or in their classroom, Condran said, adding that this interferes with teachers preparing lessons in their classrooms because the students need supervision.
“Every closet or little teeny room is now an instruction space,” said reading teacher Jason Lynch.
Both Condran and Engle said retrofitting the existing school was not an option, as the old building has substandard wiring and communications capabilities.
“If we retrofit the existing school, we’d need a place to put the students during the renovation, and we don’t have that anywhere,” Engle said.
“After awhile, everything goes into decline,” Condran said.
“At this point, building a new school is a lot more cost-effective than trying to fix the old one.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
