Site picked for new elementary school

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake’s next elementary school will be built on the south side of the city, along Yonezawa Boulevard, right next to the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center (CB Tech).

After a long search and a number of meetings, the Moses Lake School Board voted unanimously to site the new elementary school — planned as part of the $135 million school construction bond just barely passed by voters last February — on 10 acres the district owns as part of a 56-acre parcel the school district owns just south of the high school.

In addition to CB Tech, the site also hosts the school district’s public meeting room and its bus barn.

“We focused on the southeast side of town,” said outgoing District Superintendent Michelle Price. “A lot of housing growth is there.”

“A whole lot of houses will be able to walk to that school,” said Board President Kevin Donovan.

Price said the district looked at several different 10-acre parcels of land, even having several appraised, but decided on the site next to CB Tech because the district already owns the land.

“There are 11 acres next to the skills center, so there’s still room for phase 2 of the skills center project,” Price added.

The new elementary school — the district’s eleventh — is projected to cost $19.5 million, though the state will pitch in $9.4 million of that. The district will likely model the new school on its two newest elementary schools, Sage Point and Park Orchard, in order to save design costs.

While the school district is proceeding with its construction projects, the results of the school bond election are still being challenged in court. Opponents to the measure have filed an appeal asking the State Appeals Court to invalidate the bond election, citing “misconduct” on the part of the county auditor.

The district is also going ahead with plans for a “One to One” pilot project to give each student in 41 classrooms across the district Chromebook computers.

“It will be like checking out a textbook,” said Assistant Superintendent Josh Meek.

Meek said students and their families would be charged a small fee to create a fund to replace computers that are lost or stolen, and that the district is looking into providing home Internet access via district hotspots to those families without because Chromebook don’t work well without an internet connection.

“They will fully utilize the safety protocols of the district,” Meek said.

The classes that have signed up for the program range from the second grade through the 12th, and include the entire fifth grade at Larson Heights Elementary and the fourth grade at Sage Point. At some point, the district hopes to replace textbooks and the supply list with the Chromebook.

“This will allow us to rethink teaching,” Meek said.

Meek added that the expansion of the Chromebook issue to every student in the district — all 8,000 of them — will depend on the success of this project and the ability of the state legislature to come up with the funds.

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