Schools start massive move
Moving men in large trucks began carting away packed boxes, plastic chairs and countless desks Tuesday morning as Spokane Public Schools’ largest move in history officially began.
Crews cleared three elementary schools while another set of workers began the job of removing multiple portable buildings from each of the three sites.
By week’s end, Lincoln Heights, Ridgeview and Lidgerwood elementaries will need to be cleared and turned over to demolition contractors.
What makes the move so complex is that each school is sending supplies to more than a half-dozen locations. Some boxes go to storage for a year. Some are forwarded to a host school. Extra desks are put in surplus storage.
Each school is shutting down for a year and sending all their students to a host school for one year until the new schools are built.
“It’s like an octopus with a lot of tentacles,” said Kathy Ely, a district purchasing director who has been assigned to the Lincoln Heights Elementary move.
She conversed with the moving company managers and a contractor in a gymnasium packed with boxes, desks and pianos.
Outside the portable classrooms, workers cut away electrical wires and concrete sidewalks so that a backhoe could dig and expose the structure’s foundation. Eventually, each portable building will be slowly lifted with jacks and hoisted onto trailers to be stored for a year. Each portable classroom is made of two mobile-home size structures. The first classroom to be split apart like a big oyster shell was at Ridgeview.
Ridgeview Principal Kathy Williams checked in on the school Tuesday afternoon. She pointed out gaping holes cut through a hallway connecting two portables, now making room for the backhoe.
A pile of dark dirt partially covered a blue, yellow and green mural of the United States on the ground. Crumpled hunks of blacktop looked like giant crumpled bits of Oreo cookies. Fading pastel sidewalk chalk from students bidding farewell to the school added a spot of color next to the machinery.
Williams said most teachers finished packing up their rooms Friday. About five teachers came in over the weekend. Work crews roamed the halls to remove salvageable hardware like doorknobs and display cabinets.
A red-leafed tree outside, planted as a memorial for 9-year-old red-haired Rachel Carver, will be moved and returned after the rebuild is finished. Carver disappeared and didn’t show up for her last day of school at Ridgeview in 1995.
Her uncle was later arrested for her murder and sentenced to life in prison. A plaque for Carver will also be moved. She would have been 19 this year.
In the classroom, the joys of moving onto summer showed in the words of a student who wrote this on the board in room 128 at Lincoln Heights: “Thanks. You have taught us well. Even though Math is soooooo not my thing.”
Outside, a sweaty member of the moving crew wiped his brow between loads of desks.
Matthew Allen, 16, who will be a Lewis and Clark High School junior, said his dad told him the moving company was hiring.
“We’re trying to finish by Friday,” Allen said, moving for his next load.
Demolition of the schools is planned for July.
The district will send out notices when firm dates are set. Williams said she plans to be there for Ridgeview as sort of a final farewell.