Bond Measure Update Page
In May, 2007, voters in the Federal Way Public Schools service area approved a $149 million bond construction package. Nineteen months later, groundwork is complete at Valhalla Elementary and Panther Lake Elementary groundwork is underway. This coming Spring, 2009, ground will be broken at Lakota Middle School.
Five schools and three district facilities will be rebuilt. Twenty-three schools and Memorial Field will get important upgrades. In fact, all district facilities built before 1990, except for Federal Way High School and the district’s central offices (ESC), will receive high-priority repairs and upgrades such as roofs, heating systems and new plumbing and wiring, thanks to the approximately $20 million in state match grants triggered by the bond’s passage.
This page provides a rundown of what’s planned and what progress has been made. Please keep checking back for updates.
Why are we rebuilding our schools?
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Federal Way experienced a home construction boom fueled by an expanding Boeing and Weyerhaeuser workforce. Naturally, a school construction boom followed on its heels. Twenty-five new schools were built between 1952 and 1971 – over two-thirds of the district’s current facilities.
At the time, schools were built in the “California school” style popular in the 60’s, with long hallways and multiple entrances. Teachers were essentially islands unto themselves in the classroom.
New research about teaching and learning, as well as feedback from major corporations like Microsoft, says that students will be entering a workforce in which collaborating is essential. Yet California Style school buildings aren’t easily retrofitted to allow team teaching or other forms of collaborative learning.
Other issues that have emerged in the past couple of decades:
- Bringing technology applications unheard of in the 1960s into these buildings is problematic.
- Heating and cooling them is inefficient and costly compared to new state-of-the-art facilities.
- Maintaining security in and around the buildings is challenging, given the spread out layouts and number of entrances.
Construction decisions and timelines depend on several factors
Over the past few years, the district has developed building guidelines based on what education experts around the country know about great schools. The kind of environment in which learning happens best are safe, light-filled, and have the capacity to continue incorporating up-to-date technology. They are structured to enhance collaboration and relationships between teachers and students – they are places where all students can be recognized, cherished and nurtured.
Another important factor in the construction scheduling will be timing construction to coincide with the payoff of the district’s existing debt in order to maintain a level tax rate.
What you can expect to see, and when
Some of the changes in the schools will be dramatic, but even if they aren’t obvious, you can bet they are important and they will support best practices for learning.
- By 2009, Valhalla Elementary and Panther Lake Elementary's leaky roofs and long hallways will have given way to rooms that are warm and light-filled, and where staff can collaborate more easily. Both schools will be situated away from traffic, and the security of students and staff will be more easily ensured.
Valhalla’s wiring will no longer require staff to stagger their use of electrical equipment to avoid blowing breaker fuses. What will be bigger than a breadbox? Panther Lake’s kitchen.
In recent surveys, staff at the schools provided insights for the design team about what they liked and disliked about the existing buildings. Read the Valhalla survey results or the Panther Lake survey results.
- In three years – 2010 – the ancient furnace and heavy quilted window coverings at Lakota Middle School will be things of the past, and students’ sweatshirts can come off on cold school days. The 27 random, hard-to-monitor entrances will be gone. The 40-some year old carpet – first trod on by students who today are in their mid to late 50’s, that in one room has been permanently marked with the seating plan of a class long gone – will no longer give its dreary greeting to wide-eyed 6th graders entering a crucial stage of their education.
- By the end of the summer of 2010, a variety of vital improvements to 23 other schools and Memorial Field will be completed. Projects like earthquake reinforcement, lighting, wiring and plumbing upgrades, new roofs, siding, and parking lot reconfigurations, will be finished using the state match funding resulting from rebuilding the other five schools. See a list of projects included in Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3.
- In four years – 2011 – Sunnycrest Elementary staff and students won’t need to worry about the toilets backing up because trees around the campus have once again insinuated their roots into the joints of the old concrete pipes leading from the building. All buildings will be designed and built with safety in mind. At Lakeland Elementary, like all of the new schools, technology will be brought up to date and wiring will support the needs of students now and in the future as new technology becomes available.
- In 2011, Transportation – the bus yard and shop – will be rebuilt and relocated to a site near Celebration Park. Access in and out of the site will be vastly improved for the approximately 150 school busses that come and go from the bus yard each day. With drive-through bays, Mechanics will be able to perform maintenance on the busses more efficiently and comfortably. There will even be an environmentally-friendly, water-recycling bus wash.
- In 2013, the Nutrition Services and Maintenance departments, among the oldest facilities in the district, will be rebuilt and relocated next to Transportation. The Central Kitchen will no longer prepare meals for the district’s hot lunch students in an oven that originally cooked meals for sailors aboard a World War II U.S. battleship.