Quality Buildings For Quality Education
Imagine the fashions alone that have traveled the halls of Lewis and Clark High School from high-necked blouses and flapper dresses to bobby socks, hippie beads and baggy jeans.
Each generation creates its own identity, with styles to distinguish it from those who preceded. Beyond appearances, however, students’ needs never change. All these years since Teddy Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for Spokane’s most historic high school, kids still learn best in well-built and well-maintained classrooms.
On Feb. 3 several local school districts will ask voters to renew the levies that keep schools running. In the Spokane School District, voters will also decide on a $74.5 million bond issue, to renovate Lewis and Clark High School and bring vital improvements to other schools and classrooms throughout the district.
Eighty-six-year-old Lewis and Clark, with its grand front entry, and its wide Archie-meets-Veronica halls, stands as sturdy as ever. But its insides are shot. If LC were a person, it would need a pacemaker and a quadruple bypass, a couple of artificial limbs and a kidney transplant.
The present batch of LC Tigers have been quite cheerful about their funky old building, munching their lunches in the hallways instead of the decrepit cafeteria and tuning out the roar of the freeway outside. But don’t get them started on the bathrooms - they’re disgusting.
Elsewhere in the district, the bond brings new gyms and classrooms to Rogers and North Central High Schools, and a new gym for Garry Middle School. Ferris and Shadle auditoriums receive new lighting and sound. Science rooms in every high school will be renovated.
The bond will build a new Browne Elementary School and replace a “temporary” annex at Wilson with a permanent addition. Other elementary and middle schools get long overdue renovations as well, including several enlarged libraries.
The bond issue also brings computers to every classroom and replaces the schools’ expensive, outdated telephone system.
The operations levies, $36 million for 1999 and $37 million for 2000, would not increase current District 81 taxes. The bond issue would. A taxpayer with a $100,000 home now pays $99 per year to pay off the existing school bonds. That would rise to $146 annually until 2007, then drop to $89.
Whether they’re wearing Beatle boots or Doc Martens, this region’s kids will always need safe, sturdy schools, with the technology to take them into the future. That’s a classic.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely For the editorial board