ML school board awards $2.6 million pool bid
Moses Lake High School swimming coach Tony St. Onge talks to the school board during the discussion over pool building construction. The board voted to award a contract for the building at its last meeting.
MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake School Board provisionally awarded a $2.6 million contract to replace the swimming pool building at Moses Lake High School. The 4-0 vote came at the board's last meeting.
The project contractor will be Leone & Keeble, of Spokane, Mark Johnson said, the district's director of business and operations. Construction is expected to begin about mid-March, with the project completed by Aug. 15.
Johnson said the project is eligible for state school construction funding, which will pay about 76 percent of the total project cost. He estimated the district's share at about $1.3 million. The district has enough money to pay for the entire project, Johnson said, with the state's reimbursement coming after the new fiscal year begins in July.
The contract includes replacing the current fabric cover with a cinderblock building and adding new heating and ventilation systems. The new swimming pool building will have bleachers seating about 350 people, an expanded changing room (cubicles but no lockers) and new starting blocks.
In answer to a question from board member Vicki Groff, Johnson said district officials exercised an option for air conditioning. (That was one of the options included in the bid package.) Johnson said the air conditioner would be difficult and expensive to add later.
In other business, the board chose the name "Endeavor" for the new middle school that will replace Columbia Basin Secondary School next fall.
The committee appointed to come up with three recommendations submitted Challenger Middle School, Endeavor Middle School and Voyager Middle School.
Mike Nordsten, who was on the committee, said it received about 40 suggestions, narrowed that down to five, then down to three. The committee received suggestions for historical figures and with Native American connotations, and decided to eliminate those to avoid possibility of any controversy, Nordsten said.
The committee's first choice was Challenger Middle School, but Groff said for her, that name conjured up the Challenger space shuttle accident. Nordsten said that came up at the committee meetings, and most people involved didn't have that connotation. But the committee would accept any of the three, he said. The board opted 4-0 for Endeavor.
The high school students displaced from CBSS and their parents are being invited to an information night at 5:30 p.m. March 4 at CBSS to discuss their options, Dave Balcom said, director of student services. When the decision was made to convert CBSS, district officials made a commitment that CBSS sophomores and juniors could stay together as a school.
The presentation will include information about Columbia Basin Skills Center, Balcom said. That's one possible place where CBSS students could be housed, he said. Students can't tour the facility until construction is done, Balcom said, which will be about mid-May. But kids and their parents will get information about the facility and its programs, he said.
Become a Subscriber!
You have read all of your free articles this month. Select a plan below to start your subscription today.
Already a subscriber? Login
