Vashon High School improvements are long overdue

Published 3:59 pm Tuesday, August 19, 2008

We ought to be embarrassed.

For years, our community has squabbled and kibitzed over the need for a remodeled high school without ever calling the question to a vote. During this time, our children have been confronted daily with the obvious need for an improved high school campus. As we endlessly debate and discuss, our kids have made the most of their high school years in obsolete and deteriorated facilities. When will we stop wringing our collective hands and make a decision?

The school board has yet to decide whether we will even get to decide. But they have cued things up for a possible February 2009 high school bond election. Two proposals are being floated right now.

The first one, with the underwhelming ambition of “keeping the rain out,” smacks of lipstick on a pig. For upwards of $53 million, we can preserve Vashon High School as a time capsule to our own indecision. This proposal is the equivalent of fixing your roof with a blue tarp — good money after bad.

The second proposal offers a better option. It is a fundamentally modest proposal that remodels the parts of the campus that are worth saving, while rebuilding some of the rest.

By itself, however, this proposal also lacks vision. Although it adequately addresses the academic needs of the campus, it largely ignores athletics and the arts. This proposal feeds the mind while starving the body and soul.

Fortunately, the second proposal comes with potential “add-ons” that begin to approach a complete high school campus.

Possible options include minor theater improvements, a track for track meets, better computer infrastructure, enhanced field spaces and expanded gym space. Not long ago, these types of facilities were considered part of a well-rounded education. Now, some in our community see these as “extras” that are somehow unrelated to educating the whole student. As voters, it is our responsibility to demand an educational framework and facilities that reflect our broad community values.

Our prolonged debate over the school campus is all the more puzzling when we consider the costs.

The second proposal, even with all the so-called extras, would increase property taxes only a few pennies on the dollar because we are simultaneously retiring the old elementary school capital bond. For this investment in our Island, we get a functionally new high school facility that will serve all our educational needs and support other community uses for the next 40 years.

Certainly there are costs to further delay and indecision. Every year that we delay dramatically increases construction costs. Every year that we delay means another high school class that has succeeded despite the physical facility. Every year we delay represents our failure as citizens to act within our means for the well-being of our children.

How bad is the current high school campus?

You owe it to yourself and the community to take one of the in-depth tours currently being offered by the school district. The tour gives you a chance to scrutinize areas seldom open to the public and make up your own mind.

I recently toured the campus with a group of Islanders, and we were shocked by some of the conditions:

• Classrooms are undersized, poorly lit and smell bad due to poor ventilation. There is no possible argument that these classrooms support the educational mission. The only question is how much they detract from it.

• The bathrooms are nonexistent in some buildings, undersized in others and downright scary in most areas. The locker rooms were built in 1961 — and have never been remodeled.

• The campus offers almost no accessibility to disabled students or teachers. Doors are too narrow for wheelchairs; aisles are crowded with desks, and stairs prevent access to many areas.

• Building safety is an open question. No one knows how some of the school buildings would fare or if the community would be able to use these buildings for shelter in the event of a large earthquake or other disaster.

The conditions of facilities at Vashon High School are often worse than those that I have seen touring state prisons. Its not so much that we coddle our prisoners, but that we have too long delayed a decision to remodel our Island high school.

It’s past time that we move forward with a decision on the high school. Even if we get the chance to vote on a proposal in February 2009, it will take a few years to finalize the plans and complete the construction. As a result, by the time we start paying on any bond, we will likely be past the current recession.

Now is always the best time to provide for the future of our children and our community.

— David Hackett chairs the Vashon Park District board of commissioners.