Relief on the way for crowded school

No one had a bigger smile than Ann Walker at the Coeur d’Alene School Board meeting Monday night.

As trustees voted to move forward with remodeling Ramsey Elementary – all “ayes” – Walker whispered a quiet, but excited “aye” from the audience.

The Ramsey principal is ready to see some changes at the Kathleen Avenue school. More classrooms. More toilets. A bigger parking lot. A gym.

The 30-year-old school will get all of those things, and could open with a fresh look as soon as the fall of 2006.

“We’re all just very excited,” Walker said. “We have six portable classrooms, and we don’t have a gym. It makes it difficult to operate. We have to narrow lunchtime down tightly so we can get PE in.”

Walker said the school’s small parking lot gets terribly congested with buses and parents arriving at the same times to pick up or drop off students. A bus loop will be part of the $3 million remodeling project, she said. Ten new classrooms will be added.

Originally, Lakes Middle School was set to be remodeled or replaced ahead of the elementary, but rising construction costs put bids for Lakes higher than $7.7 million the district had budgeted in levy funds.

There wasn’t enough money left to do a Lakes project of the scope the district and the community wanted.

The district’s long-range planning committee recommended the board move forward with the Ramsey remodel and bank whatever money is left over for the Lakes project. That money would be combined with the next facilities levy the district passes.

If the district succeeds in passing a levy in the spring of 2006, construction of Lakes could begin that summer. That would put the project a year past the original schedule.

The district still isn’t sure where the new Lakes Middle School will be built. Originally, the plan was to remodel the existing 50-year-old facility, then the district discovered it was more affordable to build anew.

At Monday’s meeting, trustees continued discussions of where the new middle school will be built.

Early this year, the city of Coeur d’Alene began discussing a possible land swap with the district. The city was interested in trading nearby Persons Field for Lakes, which would be used as a community center. Both sites are just over seven acres each.

Project architect Mike Patano said most of the parents, staff and community he’s talked to favor the Persons site over the existing Lakes site, just a couple of blocks away.

“There’s been a lot of excitement about starting from a blank piece of paper,” Patano said. He said the logistics would be easier, too.

Students could remain at the existing school while a new one is built. If the district built at the current site, they would have to find somewhere else for students to go, Patano said. He estimates the school will take about 15 months to complete, spanning two school years.

A lot depends on the city, Patano said. He said he understands the city is looking at funding sources for a larger-scale community center and might not be interested in a trade if the money comes through.

If the city instead chose to sell the site to the district, Patano said the district could probably sell the Lakes site to a developer. There aren’t many seven-acre parcels right in town, he said.

Board Chairwoman Wanda Quinn said she felt the issue of where to build Lakes needs to be discussed once more information is available.

Business manager Steve Briggs said he recently met with administrators from neighboring Post Falls and Lakeland school districts about the fact that the three districts “are rapidly encroaching on each other’s boundaries.”

He said Coeur d’Alene would benefit from a boundary adjustment that would allow the district to purchase more property on the Rathdrum Prairie for new schools. The district needs to find sites for at least one elementary, middle and high school, he said.

“The number of schools we have here won’t serve us for more than 10 years,” Briggs said.

Most of the available land near where the district needs it most is in Lakeland or Post Falls, Briggs said. He said both Lakeland and Post Falls are “protective of their boundaries,” but Lakeland did discuss the distant possibility of a jointly administered high school.

Patano said the district should have been planning for the growth about 10 years ago.

“Now you’re kind of stuck with a reactionary situation,” he said.

Briggs said the district needs to start looking for property in alternative locations.

“The easy answer is going south,” he said.