Modernizing Mead Updating The 25-Year-Old High School Is At Top Of List For The Citizens Planning Committee

Mead High School senior Kelley Mattingly prepared for the elements.

Donned in a thick sweatshirt and hood, she and her twin sister, Theresa, shuffled off to class last week.

While the temperature outside crept into the low ‘80s, Kelley Mattingly shivered in the hallway.

“Can’t you feel how cold it is in here?” Mattingly said. “I get cold real easy, so that doesn’t help me a whole lot.”

But Mattingly knows that later she’ll have to shed her sweatshirt.

“Some classes are real cold, and some are real hot,” she said.

It’s a sentiment that many students and staff echo at Mead. After a quarter-century, Mead is showing its age.

“We’ve done a great job of making this building work,” said Mead principal Mick Miller. “But when you go to Mt. Spokane and see that new building, the disparity between the two schools really shows.”

District officials say they want to narrow the gap between the two facilities. They don’t want a situation where Mt. Spokane is a have and Mead is a have-not.

The district formed a citizens planning committee last year to help identify a list of priorities that need to be addressed. The committee is still working, but modernizing Mead is at the top of the list.

District officials are busy brainstorming ideas on how to pay for improvements to the high school.

The Mead District expects to have $5 million remaining in bond money that was used to construct Mt. Spokane High, said Al Swanson, the district’s superintendent of finance.

The new school cost the district $27.5 million to build.

Interest earnings and matching funds from the state generated on the $5 million could net the district a total of $9 million, Swanson said.

At that point, the district would apply for matching funds from the state. If approved, the district could have as much as $18 million for repairs to Mead High, he said.

A total price tag on modernizing has not been determined, Swanson said.

Mead Superintendent Bill Mester said there is a possibility that residents in the district could be asked to approve another bond issue next spring to help modernize Mead High.

Repairs could begin as early as the summer of 1999, depending on how quickly the district can secure more money.

Final figures and details are far from complete. However, Swanson said the one thing that is definite is that the Mead School District is serious about upgrading the original high school.

“The board has made a commitment to using leftover money from the new school for Mead (High),” Swanson said.

One of the first items on Mead High’s wish list is a new heating, ventilation and cooling system.

A power outage on Sept. 15 forced school officials to send students home for the day.

The outage was the result of a defective Washington Water Power transformer which feeds electricity to the school. The loss of power resulted in damage to the motors in the school’s ventilation system, Swanson said.

The school experienced a similar outage in June, according to Miller.

“Maybe at another school the students wouldn’t have been sent home. But there is no natural light in Mead, emergency lighting lasts only so long, and then it starts to get real hot in there,” Swanson said.

Mead High is 25 years old. Architectural designs for schools of that time favored what was referred to as the “open concept,” Miller said.

Temporary walls replaced traditional permanent walls and few windows were installed.

“There can’t be a have and have-not in the district,” Miller said of the two high schools. “I’m optimistic that something is going to happen soon.”

, DataTimes