Spokane Valley’s Barker High renamed Mica Peak
Wolverines will enter Spokane Valley soon, under wraps of a school name change.
Barker High School will become Mica Peak High School with a February move to new permanent quarters and adopt the slogan, “Home of the Wolverines.”
Central Valley School District leaders unveiled the changes Sept. 3 before about 200 Barker students, teachers and administrators in front of the alternative school’s future quarters, which are under construction inside a former Yoke’s grocery store, at 15111 E. Sprague Ave.
That facility will house 220 high school students and 380 Central Valley Early Learning Center preschool students.
“I think the name Mica Peak does represent what our formerly named Barker High School represents, and that’s getting our students to their peak,” said Principal Kamiel Youseph.
He and a group of staff, parents and students came up with the new moniker and the school’s mascot. Mica Peak is a prominent summit east of Spokane and south of Interstate 90 near Liberty Lake.
In 1996, Barker first opened with programs for 30 students in what is currently the Central Valley Kindergarten Center, at 1512 N. Barker Road. The school later moved in 2006 to the former Blake Elementary, at 13313 E. Broadway Ave.
“We haven’t been on Barker for years,” Youseph said. “When I researched the name, I realized we’re Barker on Broadway.”
“The decision to come up with a new name came with this move, this opportunity,” he told the crowd. “We’re going into our own space now. This is going to be our home.”
The name-change ceremony, with a drumroll recording and confetti, unfurled a new school banner. Several students danced as Kool & The Gang’s song, “Celebration,” played on the sound system.
CVSD Superintendent Ben Small spoke about the new school space being better-suited to high school students, joking with students that the site is a better fit in more ways than one.
“You’ll have bathrooms with fixtures at the correct height,” Small said. “This will be your permanent home, a new community.”
The speakers also thanked voters, who approved a $121.9 million construction bond Feb. 10 for a number of district renovation and construction projects, including the former Yoke’s renovation, major upgrades at six schools, and construction of a Liberty Lake K-2 school.
Current Barker students are enrolled in three program options.
About 120 go to the school’s core full-day, on-site program Monday through Thursday with classes and teacher-led instruction. Roughly 120 students are in the school’s ITRACC blended-learning program, Youseph said. It has a flexible schedule of online learning and on-campus teacher support. A third program, called School to Life, is a post-high school, special-needs transition program that has about 40 students.