Bowdish Students To Be Relocated For Renovation

Sat., Jan. 25, 1997

By Marny Lombard marnyl@spokesman.com (509) 927-2166

Next year will be remembered as the year of the Bowdish Junior High diaspora.

Students will scatter from the aging junior high to attend school in all sorts of places. Bowdish itself will be renovated. Work is expected to start this spring and to be complete by September 1998.

In meetings this week, parents did their own tinkering with the three options for relocating students proposed by school officials.

Central Valley School Board at its Monday meeting will decide just where to send the Bowdish students.

Parents registered concerns ranging from transportation to security, to ninth-graders adjusting to the four-period day if they are moved to University High School. On the plus side, many parents looked at the move as a chance for their students to gain experiences among teachers that they wouldn’t otherwise encounter and with students whom they’ll meet again at U-Hi. “What a golden opportunity,” said Dr. Kirk Herring, who has one child attending Bowdish.

“We’re hoping they choose to put (ninth-graders) up to U-Hi,” said parent Charlie Cox. He said he was concerned the other option for ninth-graders, which is Horizon Junior High, could fuel too intense a rivalry between athletes.

Most parents of next year’s ninth-graders seem to want their students moved to U-Hi, said Bowdish principal Glenna Smith-Bouge. “I think the feeling is that (the students) will end up there anyhow, so why not move them now.”

In the interest of making the Bowdish ninth-graders feel as though they belong, their class schedule would likely move to the four-period day, Smith-Bouge said, along with the rest of U-Hi.

Here are the three models proposed by the district:

Seventh-graders would move to a six-classroom annex at South Pines Elementary. Eighth-graders would move to the wing of North Pines Junior High currently occupied by sixth-graders. (Those sixth-graders would stay in their elementary schools, Blake and Broadway.) Ninth-graders would go to Horizon Junior High, where most of them would be housed in portable classrooms.

Seventh- and eighth-graders would be split between Horizon and North Pines. Ninth-graders would be moved to U-Hi, where they also would be housed mostly in portable classrooms.

Seventh- and eighth-graders would go to North Pines. Portables would be required but the students would be kept together. Ninth-graders would go to U-Hi.

, DataTimes

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