Kila School planning for expansion

Kila School Principal Liz English describes the school and gym as more than buildings for learning, they serve as a community hub — a hub that’s run out of space.

The rural school recently put out a request for qualifications to hire a firm to provide planning and construction services with a proposed $8.5 million budget. Once a firm is hired, the next step is to schedule community meetings to brainstorm ideas.

The budget total may change depending on the final project proposal. English anticipates a bond election will be held in November. The last bond Kila voters approved was more than 25 years ago. The school’s last attempt to pass a bond in 2009 failed.

For years, the school has made do by adding on room by room with available funds and one time with volunteers. However, this method doesn’t allow for bringing the rest of the facilities up to date or expanding in a significant way to enhance curriculum and instruction, such as a science lab and maker space, for example.

“We want to make Kila School a place children want to come learn,” English said about adding classes such as an outdoors course and activities like cheerleading. “We want them to learn a multitude of things rather than the bare minimum.”

Outside of classrooms, shared areas such as the gym and cafeteria, parking lot, library, bathrooms and hallways pose space and scheduling challenges when in use. Current enrollment is 183 kindergarten through eighth-graders, with 30 employees. While enrollment has remained stable over the last 10 years, the school did gain 20 students over that time.

The school currently has one classroom per grade level with the exception of first grade. With state accreditation standards limiting class sizes in grades kindergarten, first and second to 20 students, the school split up the roughly 30 first-graders.

“This year we should have had two first grades, but we physically did not have a classroom for it. Luckily, we had a very small kindergarten class so we made a kinder-first [combination] class,” English said during a Jan. 18 interview.

THE OLDEST part of the building is where the main office is located. It was built in the 1940s. The kindergarten through third-grade and gym buildings were constructed in the 1970s. In 1998, volunteers built the fourth- through eighth-grade section of the school. The last major project was construction of a resource room in 2015.

The lack of storage is most visible in the middle school section of the building. Taking up hallway space is a locked cart containing science equipment, a container of cross-country ski poles and archery targets; toilet paper packages sit on an open shelving unit next to a section of lockers.

“We do have a janitor’s closet in the boy’s bathroom but that only houses the chemicals and stuff we don’t want the kids to have access to,” she said.

Bathrooms are also lacking. There is one boy’s bathroom with a stall and a urinal and one girl’s bathroom with two stalls for about 115 fourth through eighth-graders.

On the way to the middle school classrooms, English stopped at the library, where tall shelves of books were condensed to one side of the room.

“We added an additional middle school teacher, so that’s why we had to move our library back,” English said, later adding, “In a perfect world, the library would include a maker space.”

Mary Ehli, who teaches science, math, outdoor education, P.E. and is the school athletic director, agreed that a science lab and maker space would be an excellent addition for Kila students to create, design, build and experiment.

“As a matter of fact, I’m doing an air convection experiment today and I’ll have to make sure I’m outside or by a window to make sure there’s proper ventilation. I could also utilize it for woodworking,” Ehli said.

She said one of the goals of expanding would be building a middle school pod.

“So our middle school classrooms would be completely separate and we would have a lot more collaboration space in it,” she said.

ON THE way to the gym, located off the main building, English pointed to the lack of parking. She said there are about 46 to 48 spaces. Parking becomes a problem during athletic events and other activities such as craft fair fundraisers or performances.

Inside the gym, which also serves as the school cafeteria, a P.E. class is underway. On each side of the gym are two sets of bleachers that are two rows high. When pulled down, the bleachers abut the basketball court lines.

“Could you imagine if we had all 183 of our kids in here for an event and all their parents?” English asked.

Kila grandparent of three, Carri Hancock has been a spectator at many basketball games.

“It’s standing-room only and you have people up here on the stage, which is usually kids on the other teams,” Hancock said. “When people are coming in they’re having to walk on the court with their wet feet so we’re out here with towels trying to dry the court so our kids aren’t getting injured.”

As the athletic director, Ehli said she opens games by welcoming spectators and reminding them they are in the “splash zone” of potential collisions with athletes and basketballs.

In the back of the gym, next to the stage, an open door leads to the kitchen where Hancock is the head cook. Scheduling P.E. classes around breakfast and lunchtime and cleaning up in between is a process.

“I have to get nine classes of P.E. in here every week. We like to get three in a week for every class but in order to fit that in around the two hours, it takes to prep setup cleanup after lunch then that only leaves four hours to do gym,” English said.

“Over here are all of our lunch tables. If we do have a basketball event, we do have a shed out back we put them,” English said.

If a new gym was built, the existing gym would become the cafeteria.

Through the open kitchen door — the kitchen’s main ventilation source outside of two windows — the scent of cookies wafted into the gym. Besides heat from the ovens, the main heating source is located in the gym. If Hancock and fellow cook Mindi Thomas had a wishlist, it would be more counter space and a griddle to cook meals, which are made from scratch.

“The main thing for us is that there’s no space,” Thomas said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.