by Lindsay Peyton

Highline Public Schools is preparing for a bond election next November – to fund renovations to deteriorating schools, safety improvements on all campuses and needed expansions to ease overcrowding.

The school board approved a $299 million bond election during a special meeting held on Wednesday, July 20.

The proposed bond is based on recommendations developed by the Capital Facilities Advisory Committee, a 39-member, community-based group that assessed district needs.

The committee recommended reserving $93.3 million for a new middle school on the district’s Galcier site, $49 million for a new school on the district’s Zenith site to house Des Moines Elementary students and $103.3 million for a complete remodel of Highline High, preserving as much of the existing façade as possible.

The proposal also calls for $18.5 million in improvements to the Olympic site so it can be used to house students during construction projects, as well as $14 million for building design of upgrades to Evergreen, Tyee and Pacific campuses.

The bond would include $19 million to replenish the capital fund and $2.65 million for security improvements to all campuses.

Highline spokeswoman Catharine Carbone Rogers explained that the tax impact of the proposed bond would be an estimated 79 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation.
 
Voters will decide the outcome during the election, which is slated for Nov. 8.

The Capital Facilities Advisory Committee, composed of Highline residents, staff, and students, spent the past year studying facility needs and creating a long-range plan and bond proposal.
 
The committee was chaired by former Burien City councilmember Rose Clark, SeaTac resident Danielle Houle and Health Sciences and Human Services high school student Larissa Hueta-Merlo.

“We had a mountain of data to go through, a lot of stuff we had never even thought about,” Clark said, addressing the school board at the meeting. “It’s a process I will never forget. It’s nice for people to know that all of their work and all of their time had an impact.”

The group’s recommendations were based on a need for additional elementary and middle school classrooms to accommodate rising student enrollments – as well as assessments to an independent survey by architects, which ranked Des Moines Elementary and Highline High schools as being in the worst condition in the district.

G. Scott Hodgins, executive director of capital planning and construction, praised the group for their hard work.

“We had a really good representation of all these opinions,” he said. “It’s like they dismantled the last bond proposal and reimagined it. What drove them was the educational objectives. Their discussion went into detail. They wanted to dive deeper.”
Hodgins said that the district is in dire need of the funding that the bond would provide.

“The district has significant capital needs,” he said. “We have failing buildings, and we have capacity needs.”

He added that state mandates have reduced classroom sizes, requiring more space for more classes. “We’re mandated to do it, and we take that seriously,” he said.

One area parent Sarah Dahl approached the board, asking members to take a closer look at small schools in the bond proposal.

She is advocating that the bond cover costs to enhance these facilities, as well as providing funds for courses and electives at Evergreen High that would make the school on par with Highline and Mount Ranier.

“For the Highline High School community and alumni, the prospect of a new facility is exciting, envisioning modern spaces equipped with new technology,” she said. “It is what I want for my sons – and it is what all district high school students deserve.”

Her sons, however, are not zoned for Highline and would not benefit from the renovations.

“Tax-paying families like mine who want a traditional high school education for their children are forced out of the district to find other public school districts, pay for private schools or move,” Dahl said. “The district’s small-school-only policy creates unfair financial stress and hardship on North Highline families.”

She explained that when the district moved to small schools, a number of campuses lost space for electives.

“As a parent, you want your children to have a high school experience where they can explore and find their way, discover things they didn’t even know they lived,” she said. “These schools get no attention, no one is advocating for them, and consequently, the kids can feel it.”

Dahl said that North Highline parents submitted a petition with a 1,000 signatures asking the district to establish a comprehensive high school at Evergreen.

She said the campus alone was assessed as needing $35 million in repairs.

“The heater went out in January, buckets collected rain dripping through the roof and one teacher had to throw away a stack of student papers covered in rat urine and feces,” she said. “How will the district ensure students and staff health and safety with not one penny of this bond is going to North Highline Schools.”

Carbone Rogers noted that small schools campuses, Tyee and Evergreen, are designated as the next schools on the priority list developed by the Capital Facilities Advisory Committee.

She explained that the current bond proposal’s call for design work will speed up the timeline for replacing these schools.

“We will be ready to start construction immediately after another bond is passed in the future,” she said. “The ability to start construction sooner will reduce the overall cost of construction since costs escalate over time due to inflation.”
 
For more information on Highline Public Schools, visit www.highlineschools.org.