The plan has changed a bit since the original concept for a new Issaquah Middle School, Clark Elementary and Tiger Mountain High School.

Now, the new middle school will be built on a play field north of Issaquah High School.

With the city of Issaquah’s approval of the Central Issaquah Plan, Steve Crawford, director of capital projects for the school district, estimates 2,859 new kids are anticipated over the next 30 years.

“Costs are revealing we may have to make a denser campus,” he said at the Dec. 11 school board meeting.

With higher density in the Issaquah Highlands and as Issaquah’s urban core density accelerates, the district has to look at how to accommodate the pressure, should it occur. So, now rather than a two-story middle school, the district will build a more compact three-story building with a smaller footprint, leaving room to add on when needed.

The plan is to break ground on the new middle school next summer. When that building is ready in the fall of 2015 and the students move in, the old middle school will be remodeled — and some of it replaced — and become the new home of Clark Elementary.

The existing elementary will be torn down after the old middle school is remodeled and reconfigured to accommodate Clark Elementary students.

An existing building near the old middle school will be remodeled into a new two-story Tiger Mountain High School, which will eliminate the portables that now house those students.

A new football field and track will be built to the west of the new middle school. A parcel to the East, which was thought to be a good location for a field, is too costly to develop because of contaminants left as a result of a skeet range that once was on the property. Crawford said it will be left undeveloped.

Crawford said the plan is to combine the high school and middle school bus loops in a central location between the two campuses. The current high school bus loop will become parking for students and staff and will have the same number of spaces.

Part of the rationale for these changes is budget. Crawford stressed that this is a long-term plan, but these three schools will be completed in rapid sequence, with final completion in 2016.

“It’s hard to say what the generation factor might be,” said school superintendent Ron Thiele, in trying to anticipate when more students will come.

But the plan leaves more ground space for future expansion, so the district is ready, as Crawford put it, when they “see the whites of their eyes.”

This project was funded in the 2012 bond election. The total cost is roughly $75 million.

Additionally, the Issaquah City Council approved annexation of 5.45 acres at its Dec. 16 meeting, for the IMS project. The small piece of property is an “island” that somehow has remained part of unincorporated King County. The council also approved the school levies scheduled for the Feb. 11, 2014 election. All are replacement levies for those that are due to expire in 2014.

The maintenance and operations levy represents 21 percent of the district’s operations Thiele said. The total M&O levy is $198 million over four years. The capital projects levy, also a four-year replacement levy, includes technology, said school board member Anne Moore.

Moore said technology is not funded at all by the state. This capital projects levy is $52 million over four years. Finally, a school bus levy for the year 2015 is set at $1.7 million.

“We’ve gained about 2,000 more kids since we ran our last levy,” Moore said.

All three levies, which will increase taxes by $40 per year for a $500,000 home, were approved by council to appear on the ballot.

“I can’t say enough about our school district,” said council member Tola Marts. “People don’t move here for the weather.”