Bond Does Double Duty $78 Million Plan Would Update Two Central Valley High Schools

Superintendent Wally Stanley hopes Central Valley School District taxpayers will think of the future when they vote Tuesday on the largest bond measure ever proposed in Spokane County.

The $78 million proposal basically would build two new high schools, providing space to move ninth-graders into the high schools and updating what officials call schools from the past.

“For our kids to stay competitive and for our district to stay competitive with other districts that have improved their facilities, we just have to move forward,” Stanley said.

Why not do one school at a time?

Two reasons, officials say:

Rivalry over the years between Central Valley and University high schools has proven so intense that officials believe the community will accept a proposal to redo both schools at once, but won’t tolerate updating one at a time.

Powered by commercial and industrial growth, the tax base in Central Valley is so healthy that the tax rate for this $78 million project is less than the rate taxpayers in Mead agreed to last spring to renovate Mead High School.

“The buildings are in disrepair,” said Lynn Trantow, mother of two junior high students and a volunteer for the bond campaign. “They look OK from the outside, but if you walk inside them, (you can see that) they need to be fixed.”

Central Valley’s ninth-graders are the only freshmen in Spokane County to be housed in junior high schools.

“We will have four grades where they should be, nine through 12, rather than having these ninth-graders in limbo land,” Trantow said. Ninth-graders who are still in junior high sometimes forget that their grades have taken on new importance, she added.

CV High is 42 years old; U-Hi is 36. Both buildings need new electrical, plumbing, heating and ventilating systems, school district officials say. It’s a stretch to install today’s technology, never mind tomorrow’s technology, in the current buildings, they say.

The new schools would hold at least 1,600 students each, including freshmen.

Central Valley officials want to move U-Hi to a new location because today’s school is cramped on 23 acres. Parking is a problem there, and athletic facilities are limited. Enlarging the current U-Hi site would mean condemning up to 20 homes, and the school board has no interest in that prospect. Plans call for all or part of today’s U-Hi site to be sold.

The school district owns 48 acres at 32nd and Pines. A zoning change from Spokane County will be necessary to build the new U-Hi on that site. Stanley said he expects no difficulties getting that zoning change, or solving the traffic problems expected to accompany the new high school.

“We’re at a unique time, when the economics are right (to pass the measure),” Stanley said. Growth in the Spokane Valley and low interest rates have combined to make the bond measure affordable, he said.

The tax rate for Central Valley property owners would increase by 57 cents per $1,000 of assessed value if the bond measure passes. That means the owner of a $100,000 home would pay an added $57 a year in school taxes.

The bonds would be paid off over 20 years.

Here are tax rates from neighboring school districts for comparison:

Spokane voters imposed a tax rate of 47 cents per $1,000 on themselves in a February bond issue that will rebuild Lewis and Clark High School for $41 million.

Mead voters in March taxed themselves at a rate of 61 cents per $1,000 for a $25 million bond measure. Mead High School’s renovation is expected to total $31 million. In 1992, Mead voters taxed themselves 97 cents per $1,000 to build the $36 million Mt. Spokane High School.

Architect Steve McNutt has said Central Valley’s new schools would be comparable to Mt. Spokane High.

In Central Valley, parents of school-age children seem to be solidly for the bond measure, Stanley said. The Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the issue.

The school board has received some criticism for the way it intends to handle as much as $20 million in matching money it will receive from the state if the measure is approved.

The district has announced no specific use for the state money, but will ask a committee of staff members and citizens to make recommendations to the school board on how to spend it. It must be spent on construction or other capital projects. The board could use the $20 million to help pay off this bond issue.

But officials also have their eye on five elementary schools that will need updating in coming years.

“It is (my) belief that voters will be aghast at the extra costs that the board has saddled them with and they will turn down the proposal,” Ed Sawatzki wrote to Superintendent Stanley in August. Sawatzki has two children attending Central Valley schools.

“I guess I would ask the public to trust us, that we would be cognizant of the financial needs of the district and good overseers of their investment,” said Kay Bryant, a school board member.

“It is a big investment, but it’s going to be a bigger investment if these kids are not educated well and we have to pay for that down the line,” Trantow said.

Graphic: Bonds would remodel CV, replace U-High