New bond request
As voters in the Freeman School District begin to pull ballots from their mailboxes this week, district officials will be holding their breath. The small rural district 10 miles south of Spokane Valley is proposing an $11.7 million construction bond to remodel the high school and elementary school buildings, the third such attempt. In 2002, voters rejected two $8 million bond issues – one in the fall and one in the spring – to update their aging facilities. Three years later they are trying again with a special mail-in election May 17.
The bond, which would cost property owners $1.95 per $1,000 assessed valuation, will add a combined 24,000 square feet of new construction.
“We are in desperate need of an infrastructure that supports us,” said district official Nancy Comstock. “Our facilities are stressed beyond what they were originally built for.”
The high school, built in 1957 for 150 students, now has more than 300. The district overall has about 900 students in grades K-12.
Across Jackson Road, the elementary school also lacks space. Despite having added a few classrooms in 1990 when the junior high was built the district has continued to add portable classrooms onto the school property for the past two years.
Of greater concern are the outdated heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems at both schools. Wires hang from the ceiling and on the floor, and broken pipes have to be dug up from under concrete foundations.
“You get to a point where you cannot fix the problems … they can go so far that you have to tear down and start over. We’d like to preserve what’s there,” said Randy Primmer, a Freeman parent who is also the co-chair of the Friends of Freeman Schools, a campaign for the bond. “It’s important that those buildings are updated to the new standards that are being used in the educational field now.”
The schools also don’t have indoor sprinkler systems to prevent fire, and the cafeteria areas and kitchens are too small.
“We have kids in the high school who eat their lunch sitting on the floor in the hallway,” Comstock said. “It grosses me out.”
At the elementary school, the Title I and remedial programs are sometimes held in the hallways.
“Some of our most vulnerable kids are taught in the most disruptive spaces,” Comstock said. “It’s time for us to do something about it.”
Because both schools qualify for state matching funds based on the age and the number of students each building serves, the state will contribute roughly $7 million for construction, bringing the total proposed project costs to around $18 million.
During the last bond in 2002, only the high school qualified for state funds, which district officials say may have contributed to the lack of support for the issue.
“We decided to wait until (the elementary school) was eligible, and do both the remodel of the high school and the elementary together,” said Superintendent Bill Thurston. “This will be a slightly bigger proposal,” and more voter friendly.
In addition to much needed space at both schools, the bond would pay for district-wide upgrades, including a consolidation of the water system for drinking water and fire safety, as well as for improvements to parking areas and traffic and bus flow.
Currently, the high school students have to walk across Jackson Road – which is now not marked as a school zone – and weave through waiting traffic at the elementary school to get to buses.
The district’s transportation maintenance area, located behind the high school, would be moved across the street.
“Right now, if we had to go into a lockdown we wouldn’t be able to get the buses out. They’d be trapped in,” Comstock said. “The design just isn’t up to date. When it was built, we didn’t talk about intruders.”
The junior high and elementary schools will be joined together by a new cafeteria and multipurpose space, and the high school will get an expanded cafeteria and gymnasium, which is not big enough to house the community during sporting events and graduation ceremonies.
“As it is right now, during events we have people standing at the door,” Comstock said. “We have a highly supportive community, and we need something that is going to support them.”
Because there is little business base to help support the bond, the cost of the issue falls mostly to the farmers and the landowners, a dynamic that has changed over the years.
“From the standpoint of who pays for it all, is has definitely changed over the years,” Primmer said. “It’s not fully funded by the farming community as it used to be.”
The area is now a mix of farms and large new homes on smaller parcels of land with families who commute to jobs in Spokane and Spokane Valley.
As growth spreads south, farmers have been selling property because it’s more valuable.
“There’s a big difference between the $500,000 homes we’re seeing now, and the farmers that have existed here forever,” Comstock said. “That’s a hard thing (for the farmers) to see happen.”
Many of the longtime Freeman area residents and farmers no longer have children in the schools, and feel overtaxed. The measure would add $390 a year to a $200,000 home, or about $32.50 a month.
Longtime resident and retiree Frank Schiebe, who once had children in Freeman schools, said he won’t vote for the bond.
Schiebe said there are too many “troubled city kids” who come to Freeman schools from outside the district, as well as other “elite” students who choice in. The district has about 121 choice students this year.
“I think we should be educating the people that are in the district,” Schiebe said. “Freeman has been in the business for years of taking trouble kids from city schools and using my taxes to pay for it.”
Comstock said that is what makes Freeman schools so unique.
“We have all socioeconomic backgrounds in our community, and that’s what makes us richer,” Comstock said. “They aren’t just sending their kids to a rural school; they are sending them to a school that represents all that’s best about Spokane.”