Two weeks from now, Snoqualmie Valley School District’s sixth elementary school will have a name. School board members narrowed the list of 15 suggestions to just four possible names for the school at their Jan. 14 meeting. The final four choices are Timber Ridge Elementary, Mountain Ridge Elementary, Little Si Elementary and Cedar Ridge Elementary.

The school, planned since early 2013, is under construction now on Southeast Swenson Drive on Snoqualmie Ridge. It is scheduled to open by the start of the 2016-17 school year, in September.

School staff began the naming process last fall, soliciting name ideas from the community in several rounds of online surveys. From the roughly 200 submissions received, they narrowed the list to 15 that conformed with the school’s naming guidelines. These guidelines called for names to be known and significant to district residents; to not conflict with names of other schools; and to avoid the names of individual people.

Prior to voting on the names, the school board received an update on the school’s progress and planned design theme. Assistant Superintendent Ryan Stokes reported that the district was ready to choose a furniture vendor for the building, a place holder website for the school had been set up and staff, including Principal Amy Wright who had been principal at Opstad, were planning for kindergarten registration.

A tree theme was selected for the school’s entry and is repeated in the building’s interior, Stokes said. Elements of dendrochronology, the scientific process of analyzing a tree’s rings, will be included in the building, too he said, presenting several possible design elements, such as red, green and blue banners to mark the different wings of the building.

The design process for the sixth elementary school process was streamlined by the school board’s decision to use the existing designs for Cascade View Elementary School. Babbit Neuman, the company that built Cascade View, is also doing the construction for the new school. The 71,000 square-foot building will have 31 classrooms and a student capacity of 650. The estimated cost is $35 million

Attendance boundaries for the new building were approved by the school board Nov. 4. The board is expected to select a name for the school at its Jan. 28 meeting, 6:30 p.m. at Snoqualmie City Hall.

For information and photos of the construction, visit http://www.svsd410.org/Page/5025.