After 2009 fire, Sno-Isle students and teachers cheer their new high-tech classrooms

EVERETT — Karen Coulombe finally feels at home.

The high school electronics and robotics teacher at the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center has moved classrooms four times during the past two years in large part because fire destroyed a building on the campus last spring.

The wait and the wandering are over.

Coulombe and her students settled into a new building at Sno-Isle just south of Boeing last month. With motion-activated lighting, a wireless sound system and a whiteboard that connects to the Internet and saves notes onto a computer, the room is equipped with plenty of modern technology.

What Coulombe finds particularly impressive is the air quality.

“We have a top-of-the-line ventilation system for the soldering stations,” she said.

The new building also houses criminal justice and math classes. Vacant for now are classrooms for new programs expected to begin next fall in auto-body and collision repair, aircraft assembly service and telecommunications.

“The new building is very state of the art, and in this economy I feel very lucky to have such a nice classroom,” Coulombe said. “When you give kids great stuff, they do amazing things. They start acting like the high-quality industrial employee we know they can be.”

Construction on a second building — the one destroyed by fire last May — is expected to be finished by July. That new space will serve a variety of programs, such as the student-run Le Bistro restaurant, medical and dental technician training, computer classes, fashion and merchandising and cosmetology.

Total cost for construction is estimated at $8.8 million.

Sno-Isle, which is run by the Mukilteo School District, offers a spectrum of courses to students from more than a dozen school districts. It's one of 10 centers around the state with job-training programs that would be too costly to offer at each high school.

“This brings us up the current technological age we should be in,” said Steve Burch, the center's director. “There is more flexibility so we can bring new programs in as the need arises.”

That, he said, is important for a school that must adapt to market needs.

“This is the first new construction since the place was built,” Burch said. “That is 32 years.”

Sno-Isle now enrolls around 800 students. It will have room for 1,150 when construction is finished.

Josh Armstrong, a Lake Stevens High School senior, was one of several second-year electronics and robotics to stick it out through each move and help set up the classroom each time.

He said it was devastating to watch television footage of his classroom burning last year, but he has found one consolation in the ordeal.

“I think all of our moves made us closer together,” he said.

Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.