District seeks input on new high school design

MOSES LAKE — Despite the fact that last February’s school bond is still being disputed in court, Moses Lake School District officials are beginning to envision what the district’s second high school will look like.

And they are asking residents to help.

“Everybody thinks architects sit around and draw pretty pictures,” said Brent Harding, an architect and designer with NAC Architects in Spokane. “But you need a lot of thought and preparation before you put pen to paper.”

Harding, whose firm has worked with the Moses Lake School District before in designing Park Orchard Elementary School and the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, told the Moses Lake School Board on Thursday that the community should set aside about six months to do this “visioning process.”

As part of that process, the school district is going to hold two public meetings to talk about all the things a new high school will need. The first will be at 6 p.m. tonight at CB Tech, and the second will be at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 19, at CB Tech.

Harding said everyone in the community should remember they are creating a high school that will last for a generation, and it will have to prepare and equip young people not yet born for career fields that don’t yet exist.

“There are jobs now that didn’t exist 10 years ago, and there are jobs that will exist in 10 years that don’t exist now,” he told the school board.

Faced with overcrowding and a potential tidal wave of children to overwhelm a currently overcrowded high school, voters in the Moses Lake School District in February just barely passed with 60.03 percent approval a $135 million construction bond to build a second high school, refurbish the current high school, and build an eleventh elementary school.

However, a group of Moses Lake residents have disputed the certification process in court, stating the failure of the county auditor to properly contact 31 voters during the final count disenfranchised those voters, and could have changed the outcome of the bond election.

Assuming all goes well, Harding said he expects the design process to begin in earnest next spring with construction of the new high school starting in April 2019, with the new school expected to be completed in May 2021.

“That will give you some time to move in,” he said.

Work on the new elementary school will go more quickly, Harding said, since his firm will base that designs on the district’s two most recent schools — Sage Point and Park Orchard.

“We’re going to look at what’s not working so we can make improvements,” he said.

Harding said he hopes to begin design work on the new elementary school in June, begin construction in May 2018, and have the new school finished by July 2019.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.