The Everett School District stretches 14 miles from south to north, with brand-new neighborhoods in the south end and 100-year-old neighborhoods in the north end.
And the needs of the school buildings in between are just as wide-ranging as the history and geography.
A record $198.9 million bond request on the Feb. 7 ballot addresses both ends of the district – building another elementary school to serve the district’s booming south end, while updating aging buildings in the north end.
Dan Bates / The Herald
It’s the largest bond ever sought by a Snohomish County school district.
Together with a renewal request for a four-year maintenance and operations levy, also on the ballot, the total tax rate would be an estimated $4.99 per $1,000 valuation. That’s $998 a year for the owner of a $200,000 house.
The bond also would provide $27 million for technology, $18 million for a variety of building improvements, $18 million to buy property for future schools, and a $2.5 million auxiliary gym addition at North Middle School.
The proposed $25 million elementary school would be built on the 60-acre Gateway Middle School campus. Design started a year ago, so if the bond passes, the school could open by fall 2007.
It would be the district’s 17th elementary school and the seventh in its south end, where new housing is expected to generate the equivalent of a school full of children within three years.
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Houses are popping up along the 35th Avenue SE corridor around Cedar Wood Elementary School in unincorporated Bothell, near the Mill Creek border. The school welcomed a dozen new students from the developments over the holidays.
“It boggles my mind every time I come to work. The houses are coming up very quickly,” said principal Jill Tokumoto.
Fall enrollment at Cedar Wood leaped 18 percent to 660 students. The 14-year-old school now has more than 120 students above its capacity. Three portables were added to three already on the site to help with the crush.
Teachers say portables are a workable solution, though lack of storage, cool temperatures and mass potty breaks get old.
With no running water, Carol Johanson will have to string a garden hose to her portable classroom for an upcoming science experiment. Last year was more challenging, she said, when she had 33 students and not enough math materials. “That’s when it really hit me.”
On the district’s other end in north Everett, some View Ridge Elementary School students are feeling cramped as well. There, the school’s age and awkward layout are to blame.
As educational philosophies outgrew 1950s designs, walls would disappear and reappear as closets became offices and classrooms were commandeered for a library and other spaces. A large addition in the 1980s housed special education programs, though the school has since taken over that area as well.
The result is a maze of long hallways with shared spaces such as the cafeteria, library and computer lab far-flung from each other and the center of things, where educators say they belong.
One instructor teaches English as a second language in a partitioned area at the back of a storage room.
“I joke I work at the back of the closet,” said Karen Knapp, who has made it cozy with curtains and a rug. “It’s obviously not the optimal space.”
In all, View Ridge has as much square footage as a large middle school. “But a lot of it isn’t usable,” principal Karen Koester said.
Most of the bond amount, $108 million, would overhaul some of the district’s oldest schools. View Ridge would undergo the most dramatic changes, to the tune of $22 million.
Bonds require a 60 percent supermajority to pass.
Reporter Melissa Slager: 425-339-3465 or mslager@ heraldnet.com.
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