Art teacher Ruth Huschle loves her classroom in Snoqualmie Middle School. The sprawling space has plenty of storage for materials, enough surfaces to stash works in process as they dry, two computers and a printer, and room for up to 24 students to work at any one time.
It’s perfect for a class focusing on creative expression.
“I don’t have to modify what I’m doing within the confines of this space,” Huschle said.
In two years, Huschle will lose her classroom. Like all SMS teachers, she’ll be moving out of the building to make way for the freshman learning center, but she doesn’t know where she’ll be going.
That decision is in the hands of Snoqualmie Valley School District residents, who will vote on a $56.2 million school bond Feb. 8. If they approve the bond, SMS staff and roughly 500 middle school students will get a new building. If not, they get reassigned to one of the two remaining middle schools.
Despite the uncertainty of the election outcome, Huschle, also a parent in the district, is fully in favor of the decisions that led up to it.
“We have to do something,” she said.
Crowding
Mount Si High School has space for only 1,725 students, and is near capacity now with 1,500 students. Meanwhile, the three middle schools have a combined capacity of about 2,000 students and a combined enrollment of only about 1,400.
Clearly, there’s room to grow at the middle-school level, and if the bond is approved, there will be a lot more room. Snoqualmie Middle School today is about 65,000 square feet, with a capacity of 600 students. The new, or replacement, Snoqualmie Middle School will be 87,600 square feet and a capacity that varies.
“It’s designed for 600 students,” explained project manager Clint Marsh of Hill International, the construction management firm for the project. That’s at a student-teacher ratio of no more than 26:1—the goal of specification documents guiding the construction of the school. Marsh assumes the average will be between 600 and 800.
“You could go up to 900 students without actually feeling crowded,” he said.
The new Snoqualmie Middle School is intended to meet the district’s student needs for the next 20 years, according to the district’s website (www.svsd410.org). It is also being designed to meet various community needs, Marsh said, with more than 100 parking spaces and several options for overflow parking.
Marsh delivered the posters and model of the new school to the district office last week,using them to give a brief tour of the site. The property is 40 acres that the district owns, flanked by Carmichael Street and residential properties off Elderberry Avenue. The site includes an artificial-turn football field and track, and a natural-turf soccer field and baseball diamond, dotted between three wetland areas. Science teachers will be able to tie in the nearby wetlands with their lessons.
“The green space here is going to be phenomenal,” Marsh said.
Design lessons
The school building will follow the basic design of Twin Falls Middle School, which opened in 2008.
“That’s not only saving us money, but saving us time, too,” said Superintendent Joel Aune.
Re-using the TFMS design will save the district an estimated $400,000 in design costs, but there will be some changes. The proposed school site changes elevation by 82 feet from one end to the other, so the TFMS design had to be reversed to address the slope.
Teachers and staff at TFMS and SMS were consulted on what they’d like to see in the new building, too, as part of the planning process.
“Everybody that’s got a discipline inside the building gives their input,” Marsh explained. The input helps “fine-tune” the design.
TFMS teachers suggested changes such as a larger art room and a deeper stage, improvements to the labs, and ventilation. The Life Skills program called for the biggest changes, though, an expanded classroom area, with its own restrooms, and the option of expanding into the neighboring flex classroom, as needed.
Nancy Meeks, director of the Life Skills program for the district, said issues with the Life Skills classroom at TFMS prompted the changes, more than any particular need at SMS.
“One of the challenges from the teachers at Twin Falls was… some of these kids come with a lot of equipment,” Meeks said.
Designs for the classroom in the new school include more space including a kitchen area, and hydraulic lifts to help teachers move students from one piece of equipment to another. Meeks was happy that she and all of the district-wide program directors were included in the consultation on the new school.
“It’s looking at our long-term needs, and the chance to maybe have a better facility,” she said.
Expanding the Life Skills area did mean “they squished some spaces down in some areas,” Marsh said, but “There’s nothing really dramatically different.”
Teachers at SMS added their own requests, such as a loading dock from the music room and maybe even a performance space to rival the Mount Si High School Auditorium.
“The commons is too small, when we have 500 people at a performance,” said music teacher Dean Snavely. “We’ve done all our concerts in the gym.”
Most of the teachers, though, are just hoping that the bond passes, and that they can look forward to a new building.
“It’s going to be a much more teachable space up at the new Snoqualmie Middle School,” said Huschle.
Passing the bond
Some of the really important aspects of SMS would remain unchanged in the new building. Principal Vernie Newell is determined to bring the SMS culture with him to the new school, for the benefit of the students and the district as a whole. “The plan involves moving Snoqualmie Middle School’s identity, traditions, school staff, etc. to a new building location. This approach has some clear advantages in terms of preserving successful programs and reducing start-up costs and time, compared to starting from scratch to open a new school,” he told the Record by e-mail.
All of these plans assume that a supermajority of voters will approve the bond in the Feb. 8 election. If the measure fails, only a few things are definite: SMS will become part of Mount Si High School as a freshman campus; and the students and staff who would have gone to SMS will transition to either Twin Falls or Chief Kanim Middle Schools.
Newell feels that the crowded schools—about 700 students in each facility—will hinder staff’s ability to teach the students, as well as leading to more discipline problems. “From my experience, the more manageable size of the student body, when divided among three middle schools, helps to minimize potential barriers to learning and distractions that can influence students aged 11-14,” he wrote.
Regardless of the vote outcome, the district will undergo another review of school boundary lines next year. Superintendent Aune said this will be necessary whether for reassigning students to a new building, or to one of two old buildings, but his focus is on the positive. “Let’s talk about when the bond passes,” he says.
Many staff members share this approach, too.
“The discussion of what to do if the bond does not pass has not taken place,” said Snavely, who is the union representative for SMS teachers. “Our energy is in passing this bond, in what’s right for the kids.”
The school district’s bond issue, Proposition 1 on the Feb. 8 ballot, would raise $56.2 million with a property tax increase of 47 cents per $1,000 o a property’s assessed value, effective in 2012 and lasting for 20 years. The cost for a median-priced $360,000 home would be $169.20 annually, or $14.10 monthly.
