Judge Gives Mead School Go-Ahead But Tough Battles Ahead In Fight To Build Peone Prairie Facility

A Spokane judge ruled Monday the Mead School board can go ahead with its plan to build a second high school on Mount Spokane Park Drive.

Superior Court Judge Tari Eitzen said the district thoroughly considered a myriad of factors before picking the property.

“It is difficult to imagine what more the board could have done in terms of its thoroughness without taking leave of reasonableness,” she wrote.

The Citizens for the Preservation of Peone Prairie - a group of farmers, landowners and environmentalists - tried to block the school by appealing the district’s decision last November.

They say the 1,700-student school would cause urban sprawl on Peone Prairie and be the death knell for its rolling wheat fields.

In the appeal, attorney Brian Regan claimed the school board dismissed at a glance all the other places the school could have been built, and ignored rules requiring timely environmental impact studies.

Eitzen overruled those allegations.

Mead leaders breathed a sigh of relief Monday. Getting the OK to build the $37.5 million high school has been arduous.

The final hurdle - applying to the state for $9 million in matching funds by June 30 - still lies ahead.

If the district misses the deadline, then it will have to wait at least one year before it can re-apply.

But chances of getting the money will get slimmer because the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction faces a $100 million shortfall for the next decade.

“We’re still on track for securing the state funds, but the time we have to do it has shortened since (the appeal was filed) 2-1/2 months ago,” said John Dormaier, Mead’s construction manager.

Even if the citizens group doesn’t appeal Eitzen’s decision to a higher court, the district faces a hearing before the Boundary Review Board sometime in the spring. The board will decide whether to allow the Whitworth Water District to extend water lines to the high school.

The concerns about urban growth on Peone Prairie probably will come up again.

Still, Dormaier said the district’s need for the new high school remains dire.

The district’s reputation for academic excellence has been a sales pitch for thousands of new homes built in its boundaries since the 1990.

The existing high school serves 1,840 10th- through 12th-graders in a building made for 1,500.

The district’s two junior highs serve 950 students each, 200 more than they were built for.

Students overflow into 24 portable classrooms at all three schools. By 1997 - the year the new high school is supposed to be completed - the existing schools could be so full that students will be forced to attend in two shifts.

“We’re reaching the point of no return,” Dormaier said.