SNOHOMISH — Long gone is the apple machine outside the principal’s office.
So, too, are the chalkboards and globes that once showed the USSR and Yugoslavia.
Now some of the last remnants of what was once Snohomish Junior High School are coming down.
The Snohomish School Board recently voted to tear down the old gym, commons and support areas of the Maple Avenue campus. Much of the school, including the classrooms, was demolished in 2012 to make room for the Snohomish Aquatic Center.
For a few years, there had been thoughts the old gym could be saved.
The decision to flatten it was largely financial. The district didn’t want to throw good money after bad.
“The cost of retrofitting that was excessive,” said Kristin Foley, a school district spokeswoman.
The laundry list of work that would need to have been done is long: The building didn’t meet codes for earthquakes and fire safety and the heating and ventilation system as well as the leaky roof and much of the flooring needed to be replaced. Sewer lines beneath the floor were broken and needed to be dug up.
What was left became a target for vandals and a center for drug use.
The junior high school opened in 1961, meaning some of its first students are pushing 70 now.
School board member Jay Hagen attended Snohomish Junior more than 40 years ago. He recently voted to demolish it.
He has fond memories of the imperfect campus. As a youngster, he learned to ride his bike with training wheels around the bus loop. As a teen, he remembers the musty smell, clanging metal from the weight room and the flooding football field.
It was a time of transition from the coziness of elementary school to the chaos of a campus that seemed big and imposing. There was the challenge of opening the first locker — the combination written on the palm of his hand — and the race to find his classrooms.
Mainly it was a place where he grew up, made friends and learned some important lessons.
All of which made it difficult to vote on its demise.
“It was hard,” Hagen said. “I have fond memories in there.”
Fellow school board member David Johnston also had mixed emotions.
“I knew it was the right thing to do but I have sentimental attachments to it,” he said.
During his time at the school in the late 1970s, Johnston served as student body president. He learned to play the tenor saxophone in jazz band . He can still hear “War” playing in the background as he was lying on the gym floor taking written exams in Mr. Krause’s PE class.
He was a kid with long stringy hair and bell bottoms who went on to become a real estate attorney. His two sons also have attended Snohomish schools; his oldest is now at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Over the years, the mission of the campus changed.
The junior high eventually became the Snohomish Freshman Campus, which was attended by all of the district’s ninth graders.
When Glacier Peak High School opened, the freshman campus closed. Ninth-graders now attend both Snohomish and Glacier Peak high schools.
That wasn’t the end for SJHS. It served as temporary quarters for Riverview and Machias elementary schools as well as Valley View Middle School during construction projects for those campuses.
Construction Group International, of Woodinville, won the contract to demolish what remained of the campus with a bid of slightly more than $550,000.
Work started last week and could take about a month.
The project calls for a gravel parking lot on the site, which can serve people using the aquatic center.
Johnston will miss that part of his past that was his junior high school.
“It was a very positive place,” he said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@healdnet.com.
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