Lake Washington School District bond supporters rally outside Sammamish school | Slideshow

School is really fun, but it’d be nice if there was room for all the students.

That’s Jackson Duguid’s perspective. He’s a third grader at Margaret Mead Elementary School in Sammamish.

“Classes are really crowded and it makes it hard to learn,” he said, standing among at least 100 people, who lined 216th Avenue outside of Mead Elementary Tuesday morning. The crowd waved red signs that urged passers-by and drivers to “Vote YES” on the Lake Washington School District’s $398 million bond to rebuild and enlarge Mead Elementary, as well as rebuild several other aging schools and build new ones to address the district’s growing population — and to do it without raising tax rates.

Students, parents, elected officials, school staff and teachers alike gathered outside the facility, the only Sammamish school in the district to receive funding if the 2016 bond passes in the April vote.

“If [people] vote yes, it’s really going to make a big change,” said Marko Vidich, a fifth grader at Mead. “We have way too many students.”

Mead Elementary, built 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.

There are also six portables on the campus, all at least 25 years old. And during lunch, students such as Vidich and Duguid sit at their desks.

“With this bond, we could have a cafeteria,” Vidich said.

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. The new school’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.

Among other things, if approved, the bond would fund two new elementary schools and a new middle school in Redmond, it would upgrade the Old Redmond Schoolhouse Community Center 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 Elementary School.

Throughout the district, people have worn red as a show of support for the bond on Tuesdays, Lesley Rogers of the Lake Washington Citizens Levy Committee said.

Parents from all over the district came out to Mead Elementary Tuesday to show their support, too.

“We’re all in this together,” said Erika Kapur, a mother of an Elizabeth Blackwell Elementary School student. “We’re happy to support Mead getting a new school.”

The 2016 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, bringing the total project’s cost to about $430 million.

Parents and students spoke of the “fabulous” or “great” staff at Mead, which Sammamish Mayor Don Gerend and Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama-Aramayo say is a testament to why families originally move to the plateau: The great schools and community.

Roughly one-third of the Sammamish population, now more than 60,000 people, are people under the age 18, Gerend said.

And even if you don’t have a student at Mead — or any school, for that matter — improving educational facilities increases property value, Gerend said.