SNOHOMISH – Aim High School has a new look, feel – and a whole lot more room.
Students in the alternative program started in their new school – a former nursing home – earlier this month.
The new campus is more than six times the size of their old space, which was mainly in the basement of the Garden City Grange.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” Principal June Shirey said.
The Snohomish School District bought the former Parkway Nursing Center at 535 13th St. last year for $1.79 million, using proceeds from mitigation fees, which are paid by developers to help offset the effects of new housing.
The complex includes 36,315 square feet of building space on 3.25 acres.
Renovations have turned the former center into a bright and welcoming space.
Sunlight streams in through multiple windows – a sharp contrast from the car tires Aim students and staff used to see from the basement windows of the grange.
In the 86-year-old grange building, students and staff shared one large room, which was crammed wall to wall with desks, tables and shelves of books and supplies.
An upstairs ballroom served as a secondary meeting space. A nearby room housed a tiny daycare that had to be emptied each day to make room for other renters.
Teachers and the school’s 70 students typically shared just one bathroom.
All that has changed.
An open area used for studying – where students spread out at tables to work on assignments or relax – is roughly the same size as the basement the school crammed everything into before.
There are now four bathrooms. Teachers have their own classrooms. There’s a computer lab, a work area, a kitchen and offices.
Then there are the small things – such as areas to show off student work.
“It’s just night and day from what we had before,” said Pat Reichenberger, the school’s math and science teacher.
Reichenberger said he’s pulling out science equipment he was never able to use in the more cramped space at the grange, such as a large erosion table, and looking forward to the experiments he’ll be able to do with students.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Teacher Sally Singh also looks forward to adding more art projects now that she’s no longer “teaching out of a box.”
She once taught students how to make candles.
“That made too many messes at the grange, so that went by the wayside. Painting went by the wayside. We were strictly pencil-and-paper type things.”
Now, she’s planning to add those projects and also is looking at stained glass, mosaic, woodcarving, etched glass and paper-making projects.
“I keep trying to think of more,” Singh said. “I’m in seventh heaven.”
Students generally are impressed by their new surroundings.
“I love it. It’s amazing that we went from a basement to this,” said junior Mandie Jarvies, 16.
Still, it’s an adjustment for the tightknit group.
“Everybody enjoyed the camaraderie and closeness of being in the basement of the grange,” Reichenberger said.
Senior Alan Foudray, 18, would rather be back in the basement.
The new facility “is a lot different. It has a more strict feel to it – a more school feel to it,” he said.
The school uses only half of its new site. The north end of the campus has yet to be renovated for other alternative programs.
Along with Aim, the south end of the campus includes an alternative middle school program, a re-entry program for students behind on credits, and a transition program for older students with special needs.
The transition program eventually will move into the north end of the campus, along with home-school partnership classes and a computer lab for the district’s online program.
There’s no timeline for that work, Shirey said.
One special date is on the calendar, however.
Graduation for AIM students is to be held June 14 in a large fireside room that links the north and south ends of the campus.
For now, staff members are interviewing prospective students for next fall – and looking forward to being able to increase enrollment.
Reporter Melissa Slager: 425-339-3465 or mslager@heraldnet.com.
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