After the recent passage of the $533.5 million bond for school construction and maintenance, the Issaquah School District has a host of exciting new projects in its future.

The bond, approved on April 26 by a whopping 71 percent of voters (only 60 percent were needed), will pay for the creation of four new schools in the district — two new elementary schools, a sixth middle school and a fourth high school. Additionally, Discovery, Endeavour, Sunset, Cougar Ridge, Maple Hills and Clark elementary schools will be renovated and enlarged so that each school receives four to eight new classrooms. The 36-year-old Pine Lake Middle School will be entirely rebuilt with all the latest technological and environmental advances.

The plans have been in the works for quite awhile already, as school district employees and residents alike noticed the impact that a quickly growing population was having on local schools. In the past four years alone, the district gained 2,000 new students, and estimates show another 1,500 to 2,000 kids joining in the next five.

“We could foresee there were going to be growth issues,” Issaquah School District Director of Capital Projects Steve Crawford said. “Community members were asking how we were going to accommodate it.”

Issaquah and Skyline high schools already have around 2,200 students each, and if there is no new high school built, then these numbers could go up to 2,400 or 2,500 within a few years, Crawford said. He explained that ideally, a high school should have no more than 1,600 students.

Jumbo-sized schools have many drawbacks, such as a schedule with three to four different lunch periods and large class sizes.

“It’s harder on the building, the staff, the kids … ultimately, it affects their education,” Crawford stated.

Another factor that made the bond all the more pressing was the acquisition of land in an expanding and very in-demand city.

“Development takes land, schools take property,” said Issaquah School District Director of Communications L. Michelle. “And land isn’t going to stay around forever.”

A new bond originally hadn’t been scheduled until 2018, but “if we didn’t move forward, we might not even find a place,” Crawford said.

A 60-member bond committee formed in early 2015 and met several times to come up with a recommendation for the superintendent. The proposed bond went to the ballot on April 26 and passed with “the highest margin ever,” according to Crawford, who called it a “clear mandate that we need more classrooms.”

Michelle said that she has heard almost no negative comments about the bond.

“[The vote] was a pretty strong message … the community really values education,” she said. “And the district has a really good reputation for financial responsibility.”

The 20-year-long bond will not cause property tax rates to rise. Crawford said that the district carefully schedules bonds so that old ones phase out as new ones are added, replacing one payment with another.

“It’s like buying a new car when you’ve finished paying off your old one,” he explained.

Raising building and maintenance funds through bonds decreases the chance that funds from classroom operations or teacher salaries will have to be used to fix school buildings. The new school buildings will be very energy efficient, cutting utility costs and allowing those dollars to go to the classrooms.

Now that the bond has passed, the first steps for the district will be “to work on the properties we already have,” Michelle said, explaining that the existing schools will be renovated and expanded before new schools are built on properties that the district has not yet acquired.

She estimated it will take eight to 10 years before the new schools are finished.