By Leslie Brown for The Beachcomber
Faced with wide-ranging costs for round two of their multi-million-dollar makeover of the Vashon High School, three of the five school board members voiced support last week for a project at the low end of the current cost estimates.
The Vashon Island School Board is grappling with how to address a range of facility issues at the high school campus — from a track so inadequate it can’t host track meets to insufficient gym space. Architects have given the board several options to consider, with price tags ranging from $25 million to $40 million.
At Thursday’s meeting, three board members — board chair Laura Wishik, Dan Chasan and Bob Hennessey — told architects they’d like to see them come back to the board with a $25 million proposal. They also identified their three top priorities — a new gym, a new track and field and upgrades to Building L, which houses StudentLink and FamilyLink. Board member Steve Ellison, stressing the need to invest more in Building L, said he’d be comfortable with a $30 million project, and Kathy Jones opted for around $38 million, saying she wanted to see the school district tackle all of its facility needs in one bond measure.
The board did not take a vote. Still, Wishik said after the meeting, the discussion suggests a majority has made it clear that they’d like to spend less, not more, on what’s being called Phase 2 of the district’s capital facilities project. Board members hope to vote on a final proposal later this year with an eye toward a bond measure in February or April of next year.
Thursday night’s discussion gives the planning team the direction it needs to make progress, Wishik said. “They’ve been stuck for a while. And the full board needed to weigh in and give them direction. … That’s what happened Thursday night. There was not a consensus, but a majority made it clear what they wanted,” she said.
Front and center at Thursday night’s discussion was the fate of the high school’s existing gym, an aging structure that the district says is not big enough for its needs and is seen as inadequate by those involved with sports on the island.
All five board members endorsed the idea of building a new gym to replace the old one as the primary high school athletics structure. But an issue where differences have emerged is what to do with the old gym. A secondary gym is needed, school officials have said, to meet both district and community recreation needs; young children in community basketball leagues, for instance, are often playing basketball late into the evening because of demands for court space. But the district is divided on whether to tear down the old gym and build a second, smaller gym or keep the old gym as the district’s auxiliary structure.
In an exchange over the issue, Superintendent Michael Soltman expressed frustration with those board members who wanted to keep the old gym in use for the next several years. “I’m not confident that you’ve heard or accepted that the gym you have now has costly deficiencies,” he said.
Hennessey, in response, noted that the district invested $700,000 on a new heating system for the gym two years ago. “Can we just disregard that?” he asked.
Soltman presented a list of deficiencies with the old gym, among them inadequate lighting. Said Hennessey in response to the list, “Inadequate lighting is not an argument to tear it down.”
Soltman, after the meeting, said he questions the board’s current leaning, which is to keep the old gym in place. “All the experts I’ve talked to have said it has no residual value,” he said. The board, he noted, will now have to face other critical questions, like its programmatic value, seismic integrity and more. “Now we need to go in deeper and wrestle with these questions,” he said. “What really is that compromise? What really is that tradeoff?”
At the same time, he acknowledged the board’s direction. “They’re pretty adamant that we can get 10 years or so out of it without putting much money into it,” he said.
Phase 2 follows on the heels of a major redesign and rebuild of the high school campus, a $48 million project that was completed last year. It focuses largely on athletic needs, though not entirely — a new track, field and grandstand and a new gym are key components of the proposal, but it also includes upgrades to building L, a new greenhouse and a new bus barn. In all the scenarios, Building F, a brick building constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Roosevelt administration and that used to house the band and journalism programs, would be torn down. In its place would go a set of tennis courts — needed, the district says, because the tennis courts next to the old gym would be demolished to accommodate a new gym.
The school district has struggled over the last several years to get over the supermajority hurdle in school bond measures when it comes to improved athletic facilities. In 2009, voters rejected a $75 million bond that included both classroom buildings and athletic facilities. Four years ago, voters narrowly supported a $48 million bond that did not include those athletic facilities but failed to pass a separate $3.5 million bond to build a new track and field. Hilary Emmer, who attends most school board meetings and keeps a close eye on district expenditures, said the board — even with a $25 million proposal — is essentially back to that $75 million project voters rejected six years ago.
Chasan, often one of the fiscally conservative voices on the board, said the fact that enough voters have been unwilling to fund a new gym, track or field in recent elections underscores the work now before the board. “People have already decided no twice in the last six years on improvements to athletic facilities,” he said. “So if we want to do this, we’ll have to put forward a pretty compelling argument.”
