What started with a leaky boiler flooding the school kitchen a year ago has turned into a year-long process that has Tiger Mountain Community High School students preparing food with a small hand sink and working on dirty plywood floors.

When maintenance crews began their cleanup in October 2009, they discovered black mold, which is known for causing serious illness. The space was closed for about four months of cleanup.

The floors were torn up and the walls stripped, but not replaced. It’s been about 10 months since the building reopened to students, but the space still doesn’t have flooring.

The remodel slowed down when Principal Ed Marcoe saw the mess as an opportunity to ask for more than what the previous space offered. He pushed the district for a commercial kitchen to startup a culinary program.

The redesign delayed renovation by about a year. The district settled on a new domestic design with commercial elements. It’s expected to cost about $100,000.

A teacher was hired in February to get the program rolling. He said he could deal with the unfinished space in the meantime, and classes began using the kitchen this fall, Marcoe said.

However students grew tired of the mess, and began noticing a trend of problems at the 1991 facility, which is made of several outdated modular buildings.

“I find it offensive that we don’t have a kitchen, but Issaquah High School has toilets with multiple flush settings,” said student Garrett Lampson.

Lampson, who was asked to leave his last school for behavior problems, began to dig through school board meetings. He visited other high schools in the district for comparison, and his passion grew.

He walked the school with another student to take pictures of sockets falling from the walls, wires running along the floor and bulging ceiling tiles.

When students turn on the faucets in the one commercial-sized sink in the kitchen, a drinking fountain on the opposite side of the wall begins to leak onto the student commons floor.

Administrators met with the class, but the students wanted more of a guarantee that something would be done. The student leadership class sent Lampson and two other students to speak to the Issaquah School Board – armed with pictures.

A few days after the board meeting, maintenance crews addressed several of the wiring and wall-socket issues with duct tape and a few new ceiling tiles.

“I’m really proud of them,” Marcoe said of the students, pointing out how they’ve met one of the district’s end goals of producing involved citizens.

The students care about the school, and it shows in the fact that there is very little vandalism, he said.

Although the kitchen project took more time, bigger changes are on the way, said communications director Sara Niegowski.

Construction on the kitchen and connected student commons is scheduled to start this month, she said.

“If they were going to replace it with what they had before, it would only have taken a month or two,” she said.

Many classrooms also will be getting new interactive whiteboard technology, which explains why one classroom hasn’t had its projector mounted on the ceiling, she said.

Some work has been completed, including the student bathrooms, which also had black mold. The students used portable potties and hand sanitizer for about five months while the work was completed.

“Expensive” or “garbage can”?

Tiger Mountain attracts struggling students, special needs kids and fifth-year seniors by offering smaller classroom sizes and a slower pace.

While work is moving along at the school, the students, many who’ve struggled with authority in the past, feel neglected.

At the same time, administrators have said neglect couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Because of our past mistakes, it seems to me that we’re being put aside by the district,” said student ASB president Jimmy Hightower, after pointing out the cracks in the student commons floor that ran into large divots of missing tiles.

“People like us get left behind,” Lampson said, adding that the students often feel like they’ve been put in the “garbage can.”

The school administration disagreed. The students in this school not only get more attention than any other student, they also cost more.

The school has a 17 to 1 student-teacher ratio. Most schools have an about 32-1 ratio.

“I don’t think the facility has been neglected at all,” Marcoe said. “Costwise this is the most expensive building in the district.”

The classrooms surround a beautiful dirt courtyard with local plants. Tall evergreens are the backdrop for a covered outdoor ball court.

The once leaky roofs have recently been replaced, Marcoe said.

The statement that administrators don’t care especially stings at Tiger, because no other students get that level of attention, Niegowski wrote after an interview with The Reporter. “If nobody cared, that concentration of resources would not exist for them.”