On Monday, the Lake Washington School District (LWSD) board of directors unanimously voted to reallocate unspent funds from a 2006 bond measure to accommodate the district’s growth through the 2017-18 school year.
In addition, the district has received money from the state’s School Construction Assistance Program (SCAP).
Kathryn Reith, communications director for LWSD, said $12 million will come from the unspent bond funds and $30 million will come from SCAP.
Reith said district officials began discussing repurposing the funds in the spring after a $404 million bond measure that would address the district’s overcrowding and enrollment growth failed.
The $12 million of unspent funds is available as the result of past bonds that have been sold but unallocated. These dollars come from a bond measure that paid for building modernizations throughout the district. Reith said the projects came in on time and under budget, which is why the money is available.
“These funds will give us the means to add the classroom space we need for our rapidly growing student enrollment, at least for the next three years,” said LWSD Superintendent Dr. Traci Pierce.
Of the $42 million of repurposed funds, Reith said $20 million is committed for a short-term facilities program that will pay for portables, an addition at Redmond Elementary School and teacher planning spaces at Juanita High School and Evergreen Middle School.
The addition at the elementary school will add six classrooms, restrooms and a shared instructional space and cost $6.3 million. The teacher planning spaces will free up classrooms during teachers’ planning periods for another class and increase classroom utilization, providing the equivalent of 17 classrooms. This will cost the district $1 million.
In addition, a press release states that district staff developed the following plan:
The Capital Facility Plan standard of having separate art/science rooms and computer rooms in modernized elementary schools is temporarily suspended as needed. Those rooms are already being used as regular classrooms in some schools. This adds 18 classrooms districtwide and has no monetary cost.
The plan will also add green portables to the following elementary schools John James Audubon(one), Ben Franklin (one), Benjamin Rush (three), Louisa May Alcott (four) and Redmond (four). Portables will also be added at Redmond Middle School (one), Evergreen Middle School (four) andLake Washington High School (10). This adds 28 classrooms and will cost $12.7 million.
The district previously announced a plan to add 69 classrooms, which are included in the projects to be funded with the repurposed monies.
Reith said the district is experiencing growth all over, but mostly in Redmond and Kirkland.
“Sammamish was overcrowded for quite awhile until Carson (elementary school) opened,” she said.
In addition to these projects, Reith said the resolution the board passed also allowed for the repurposed funds to be used to “provide for required bond planning and architect predesign” and to “acquire property for future expansion.”
She added that in the future, if a bond measure passes, funds are not going to be collected until the following year, so the reallocated money “provides some funds to begin that work before the bond money actually begins to come in to our accounts.”
