West Valley looks at options for expansion

West Valley School is at a crossroads.

With 436 students enrolled this fall, the school is very nearly full. Already there is no extra classroom space. Estimates suggest that the school is just 40 students away from maximum capacity.

The district anticipates an enrollment of 600 students in just five years. There is no way that many students can fit in the existing building, but figuring out how to prepare for that growth — not to mention any expansion beyond the five-year target — is proving tricky.

Professionals from Coeur d’Alene-based Architects West and Teater Consulting of Hayden, Idaho, are helping the district explore its expansion options.

John Evans of Architects West and Dave Teater presented several possible options at a school board work session Monday.

West Valley’s existing building has a “practical capacity” of 444 students, according to Evans and Teater’s estimates. The building’s maximum capacity is 477 students, but in that scenario, “it’s tight-packed sardines,” Evans said.

He and Teater presented four possible expansion options to give trustees and administrators an idea of how the district could accommodate future growth.

The first option involves modifying the existing building to increase its capacity to 500 students and building a second building with a capacity for 122 students. The modified building would house students from kindergarten through eighth grade, just as the current building does.

The new building would be for primary students up through third grade.

Teater said he and Evans brainstormed this configuration in anticipation of growth years from now.

“What if the school district grows to the point where you have four elementary schools?” he asked the board. “I would guess you would want three or four elementaries feeding a middle school, so we’re trying to plan accordingly.”

He shared a story about one school district that expanded by putting its kindergarten through third grades in one building and fourth through sixth in another. The district continued to grow, and it continued to put different grade levels in different buildings. Eventually, Teater said, the district had seven school buildings: one for each grade level through sixth grade.

That’s the sort of scenario he and Evans hope to help West Valley avoid, Teater said.

The second option is similar to the first in that it modifies the existing building and includes a new facility. The modified building would have room for 453 kindergarten through eighth-grade students; the new building would have a capacity of 169 students.

Cost estimates are extremely rough for all the options presented Monday, Evans told the board. None of the estimates include space for technology and consumer sciences classes, which school staff and community members have indicated should be part of the school’s offerings in the future.

Also missing from the equation is the cost of putting in an on-site kitchen — probably one kitchen for the whole district.

Evans estimated Option A could cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.7 million. Option B could cost a little less than $6.2 million. Neither includes the cost of land, should the district decide to purchase a new site for a new school.

If the district decided to build a new building, that school almost certainly would be for lower elementary grades. The existing building is a better fit for middle school students, Teater and Evans told the board.

The building has a large gymnasium more appropriate for middle school athletics and physical education than elementary P.E., Evans said. It also has a large cafeteria space, which would be convenient for large numbers of middle school students moving through the room as they transition through their daily schedules, and ample lab space.

“That is a true hands-on science lab that you see at a high school or middle school level, not an elementary level,” Teater said.

The third option Evans and Teater presented involved adding on to the existing building. The plans, which haven’t yet been drawn up by an architect, would expand the school’s capacity to 622 students.

Evans estimated Option C would cost about $3 million.

A fourth option likewise adds on to the current building but also includes replacing existing square footage with new construction. This option, Evans said, likely would cost about $4.3 million.

Too often when the board reaches this point in its site planning process, it goes with the cheapest option, longtime trustee Gary Krueger said. But he cautioned the other board members to put the district’s educational needs first.

“What the costs are, are not always the best indicator of where the education is. Yes, costs are important, but you have to think about where you want the district to go,” he said.

Teater agreed and told the board that he and Evans had debated whether to present cost estimates at Monday’s work session at all. He urged the board to “figure out what’s best for kids, then figure out how to get there.”

The trouble is not everyone agrees on what’s best for kids. At a community forum in October, some community members were adamantly opposed to expanding the existing building any further. The building was most recently remodeled in 2000, when $1.9 million in bonds paved the way for six new classrooms, a new gym, new administrative offices and the library.

The district is halfway through repaying the bond and currently has a $5.2 million bond capacity, district clerk Cindy Foley said.

Others have indicated that the district should expand the building one more time and leave construction of a new building to the future.

The trouble is that the future is arriving quickly. West Valley’s enrollment has grown by 33 percent in the last 10 years.

“At some point in this school district, there will need to be a second campus. Sooner or later, somebody someday is going to have to say there’s going to have to be a second campus,” Teater said.

The question now is whether this board or a future school board will make that call. The trustees will continue to discuss their next work session, which is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 11, immediately before the next regular board meeting.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com