Lake Washington School District Board of Directors approves $400M bond for April ballot

Margaret Mead Elementary School students do not have a cafeteria.

“Students are now served hot lunch in an exterior courtyard,” Lake Washington School District Deputy Superintendent Janene Fogard said during a board meeting Monday. “We learned that they’ve resulted to netting over the courtyard to make sure crows don’t come down and pick off the salad bar.”

If, however, the public approves a $398 million bond the district’s board of directors approved Monday for the April ballot, the district will rebuild and enlarge Mead Elementary, as well as rebuilding several other aging schools and building new ones to address the district’s growing population.

Mead Elementary, built in Sammamish 37 years ago, was designed to house about 450 students, but currently has a population of 600 students. Applying the reduced state funded class sizes, the school has an even smaller capacity of less than 400 students.

“Our district is at a critical point with regard to classroom space,” said Nancy Bernard, board president. “Moving to all-day kindergarten and reducing class sizes thanks to new state funding increases our need for more classroom space. At the same time our enrollment continues to grow.”

There are also six portables on Mead’s campus, all at least 25 years old.

The school, comprised of six buildings connected via outdoor walkways, and its portables have a “fair”rating, based on the annual state building assessment, according to the district.

If approved, the bond would allow contractors to build a new building to the side of the Sammamish site,allowing classes to continue in current facilities until the new structure is available, likely in 2019,according to the district.

The new school will include a cafeteria, library, gym and 30 standard classrooms. It would also have rooms for music, art and science; a space for special education; and an outdoor covered play area. It’s capacity would be 550 students, which is an increase of 158 students based on the state’s reduced classroom size model for kindergarten through third grades.

The final project cost for Mead Elementary approaches $45 million.

Mead Elementary is the only Sammamish school lumped into the funding model for the Lake WashingtonSchool District’s 2016 bond.

Among other things, if approved, the 2016 bond would fund two new elementary schools and a new middle school to be placed in Redmond; it would upgrade the Old Redmond Schoolhouse CommunityCenter to include a preschool; and it would replace portables at Explorer Elementary School in Redmond.

In Kirkland, the bond would fund replacing and enlarging Juanita High School and Peter Kirk ElementarySchool.

The bond measure would address the district’s immediate needs, providing funding to rebuild and enlarge aging schools and to create new classrooms for the steady influx of student enrollment.

The district anticipates $21 million from state assistance and another $10 million from school impact fees,bring in the total projects cost to about $430 million.

“The plan that we’ve developed does involve subsequent bond measures to fund the longer term needs,”district Superintendent Traci Pierce said Monday. “Bond measures won’t increase tax rates. Those tax rates will maintained at the 2015 tax rate and will be kept steady over the next 15 years.”