District unveils mascot, colors
MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District’s next planned elementary school, Groff Elementary, now has school colors and a mascot.
“Meet the Groff Gators,” said Superintendent Josh Meek during a regular meeting of the Moses Lake School Board on Thursday.
The school’s colors will be yellow and blue, and if the name is somewhat odd because Moses Lake does not have alligators, Meek pointed out that the district doesn’t have tigers (Garden Heights Elementary) or lions (Lakeview Terrace) either.
The new two-story school, which is expected to cost $17 million to build and will have room for 500 students, will also serve as the prototype for the district’s next batch of elementary schools. Under a revised construction plan initially approved by district voters in February 2017, the MLSD will build two new elementary schools, bringing the total in the district to 12.
However, the MLSD is also planning to slowly replace many of its current elementary schools, especially those built by the Department of Defense in the 1950s and 1960s as part of a massive program to support communities with military bases.
According to Cameron Golightly, a senior architect with Spokane-based Design West, the school design will incorporate school colors into the construction, with construction work going out to bid the first week of April.
However, he said, a lot of school districts are calling for construction bids at the same time, and Design West doesn’t want to have contractors having to rush to try and deliver proposals to multiple entities on the same day.
“There are lots of contractors looking at this,” Golightly said.
Golightly added that right now, there are contractors currently looking for work, which is different from the situation last year, when most builders had little time to spare.
Golightly also said that once a lowest bid is received, the board will have to approve the awarding of the contract at a meeting sometime in April.
Design West architect Kirsten Curtiss, showing a board displaying the materials to be used to build Groff Elementary, said the school will be compact and made of “very simple” materials to make it “durable and economic.”
“We want it to last, we want it to hold up, we want it to look welcoming as you come in,” she said.
“I would think keeping it simple would make it an attractive project,” said School Board President Elliott Goodrich.
The school will be located south of Nelson Road and east of state Route 17, across an as-yet unbuilt road from the Moses Lake Christian Academy.
If all goes according to plan, work should begin early this summer on the facility and be complete in time for the school to open in the fall of 2021, Golightly said.
“How are we doing relative to budget?” Goodrich asked.
“We’re tracking where we should,” Golightly responded.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.
