Cheaper Plan Better For Students

Central Valley School District showed commendable sensitivity to community concerns in 1998 when it drafted a $78.1 million bond issue to fund construction of two high schools.

District officials found new property for U-High at 32nd and Pines rather than rebuilding on the present site, which would have meant condemning some nearby homes. They also laid out the new school facing 32nd to minimize the impact of student vehicles on Pines Avenue.

And they came up with a strategy that would allow extensive renovation of Central Valley High School to proceed at the same time as the new U-High is built. That way families in both high school attendance areas could see and enjoy the results of their tax expenditure at the same time, in 2002. No favoritism.

Those and other efforts paid off when district voters approved the largest bond issue ever placed on a ballot in Spokane County.

Now that funding is approved, however, the district’s good intentions have run into complications.

In order to accommodate all students during the construction activity, some of them must be inconvenienced. But which?

That issue, the subject of four public meetings last week, is on the agenda for tonight’s school board meeting.

Will Central Valley students have to stay where they are during the two years it will take to build a new University High, then move into the old U-High and wait another two years for their own school to be completed?

Or will they move into North Pines Junior High for two years so their own new school can be completed according to the original, concurrent schedule? That option would entail splitting up the North Pines students and moving them into other junior highs in the district.

Either choice has down sides. But the first option, which district officials call “hold and stagger,” has a definite up side as well.

To house CV students at U-High for two years would incur an estimated $300,000 in transition expenses, primarily transportation. But to accommodate them at North Pines would require substantial expenditure on relocatable classrooms, driving the cost of that option up to about $1 million.

That $700,000 difference is money that could be spent on permanent enhancements to both new schools instead of temporary transitional costs. Under current plans, the only part of the existing CV High School that will remain is the gymnasium. When the entire project is completed students in both attendance areas will have virtually mirror-image schools. Both student bodies would enjoy the benefits that could be bought with the $700,000.

In the meantime, about 150 present seventh-graders at North Pines would avoid having their tumultuous junior high years jarred further by being split up from their friends and distributed to the alien turf of rival schools.

That’s not to downplay the significance of the high school experience for the Central Valley student body, but they at least would remain intact as a group.

It’s not a perfect solution - unfortunately, none is available - but it offers long-term advantages that will benefit the district for years to come.