MLSD board hears some options for high school

MOSES LAKE - Projections for growth in the Moses Lake School District, and options for addressing that growth, were the subject of a special school board workshop Monday.

Board members hired NAC Architecture, Spokane, to study possible population growth in the district, how much Moses Lake might grow, and the school district's options to accommodate those kids.

Analysis of the demographic data indicates that Grant County in general, and Moses Lake with it, will keep growing, at least for a while, Steve McNutt said, who worked on the study.

Grant County as a whole has more kids than the statewide average, McNutt said. In fact, kids ages 18 and younger make up 30.7 percent of county population, as opposed to the statewide average of 23 percent. Kids ages 18 and younger are the largest segment of the county's population.

School district growth is projected to be about 1.5 percent annually, according to data from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, McNutt said. It's called the "cohort projection," and in 2005 it projected the district would have the equivalent of 7,830 students in 2010. That estimate was five kids short, McNutt said.

For 2018 its authors are projecting 8,629 students in K-12, he said.

(The following analysis considers the high school only; the middle schools and elementary schools will be featured in subsequent stories.)

Moses Lake High School is projected to grow a little over 1 percent per year, about 127 additional students by 2018, McNutt said. Principal Josh Meek, when reporting to the school board on proposed schedules in December, said the high school currently has about 2,300 students. The building, built in 1993, was designed to hold 1,500 to 1,600 students, McNutt said.

Portable classrooms aren't an option, because there's no more room around the existing building, McNutt said. (There's empty, district-owned land around the high school, district superintendent Michelle Price said, but the swimming pool, track, tennis courts, baseball, softball and soccer fields are directly behind the building.)

In addition, adding classrooms doesn't address the demands on the cafeteria, the gyms, library, music rooms or other spaces dedicated to specific instruction, he said. More students also will mean expanding parking, he said.

The document laid out three options, adding onto the existing high school, building a second high school or changing the high school schedule.

Board member Vicki Groff said district patrons asked her about building a second story on the existing building. Theoretically that's possible, McNutt said, but the current building would need a new, stronger foundation and structural changes to hold a second floor.

He estimated a retrofit would cost about $38 to $40 million, about 50 to 60 percent of the cost of a new high school. That might not address the problems with the cafeteria, PE and other spaces, he said, and it would only solve the problem for about 10 years. "At that point MLSD will face the question of a second high school all over again."

Expanding the existing building would encounter some of the same problems as adding portables, he said. Whether it's portables or permanent classrooms, building directly behind the high school would require tearing up the softball or baseball diamonds, the track, the soccer field or tennis courts, or all of them, he said. It would also require substantial changes to parking and traffic management.

Year-round school would mean about 25 percent of the kids would be out of school at any given time. If growth continues at its present pace, the high school still would be a little overcrowded, about 5 percent over its capacity. But it wouldn't return to its current overcrowding level for about 17 years, McNutt said.

A new high school would cost somewhere between $76 million and $100 million, depending on its size, McNutt said. The district would be eligible for about $10 million in state construction funds to offset some of the cost, he said, with the bulk of that going to the high school.

Part of the construction cost would be adding the spaces needed to provide parity between the existing high school and the new one - gyms, theater, music rooms, athletic fields. Along with the construction costs, a new school would increase the district's operating budget; McNutt estimated they would be almost the same as the existing school.

McNutt estimated a new high school accommodating 900 students would cost about $76.28 million to build. A new high school accommodating 1,600 students would cost about $100.7 million, he said. Some of those costs would offset through state construction funds.

A school with a 900-student capacity would solve the overcrowding problem until the mid-2030s, McNutt said, at current rates of growth. That's about the same time the existing high school would become eligible for modernization, he said.

A 1,600-student high school would solve the overcrowding problem until about 2055. But a lot of its features would be underutilized in the meantime, he said.

Board chair Connie Opheikens suggested another work session to examine the report in more detail. A date will be selected at Thursday's board meeting.