New school name reflects community

Still to come are mascots and colors. But students on the Five Mile Prairie now know what to call their new school.

The Mead School District board of directors voted last week to name the school Prairie View Elementary.

“We explored lots of names,” said Becky Cooke, the principal of the new school, who also assisted a committee charged with naming the facility.

“The prairie holds such a special place for everybody up there,” Cooke said. “The name reflects that small community feel. They really wanted to keep that.”

Mead voters approved a $37.7 million capital bond in 2004 to build a new elementary and a new middle school to help with student population growth in the north Spokane County schools.

In September, the board commissioned a committee of seven to 10 community members to build a list of potential names for the new $16.9 million elementary school, on Johannsen Road.

The committee, with help from the Evergreen Elementary School community – from which many of the students will come – came up with three names: Five Mile Elementary, Johannsen Elementary and Prairie View.

Cooke said it was important that the prairie be represented in the name, and the district already has a historic schoolhouse named Five Mile.

The board voted unanimously to name the school Prairie View, Cooke said.

Now that the name has been selected, students will be involved in picking the mascot and school colors, which will be displayed in the school gym and cafeteria.

That will be done in January, Cooke said.

Riverside superintendent retires

The Riverside School District is searching for a new superintendent to replace Galen Hansen, who announced his retirement last month.

Hansen, 60, has been an educator for 30 years, 27 of them in Riverside schools. “After 30 years it just feels right,” Hansen said.

Hansen took a co-superintendent post in the district seven years ago, sharing the job with Janet Kemp, who stepped down last year to return as the director of community resources and the principal of the independent scholar program, Hansen said.

Hansen was the vocational director and technology coordinator before becoming superintendent. He started in Riverside as a vocational agriculture teacher.

“The local teacher at that time had died in the middle of the year from cancer,” Hansen said. “I agreed to stay that year and finish up for him, but I never left.”

Hansen said he is proud of the district’s financial and academic successes.

When he and Kemp took over seven years ago, the district went from having a budget deficit of more than $1 million, as well as a fund balance deficit, Hansen said.

“Today the district is in good, sound financial shape,” Hansen said.

The district’s state test scores also have improved.

This year 63 percent of 10th-graders at Riverside High School passed the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL. The state average is 51 percent.

“We’re one of the top in the state,” Hansen said.

Hansen will continue to lead the district until July. He said he has several post-retirement ventures ahead but didn’t specify what.

“I’m too young to totally retire,” he said.

The board of directors will begin the process of searching for superintendent candidates immediately. They hope to begin screening applicants the week of Feb. 23, with interviews tentatively scheduled for March 12 through 16, with final interviews and selection by March 23.