The Cheney School District’s capital facilities bond voters will begin considering later this month has many more parts and pieces than the $44.88 million measure that failed to receive a needed 60-percent majority twice in 2015.
That bond was for expansion of the district’s sole high school only, and included three of four phases to modernize the facility that began life in 1966 as a multi-building campus, compared to the single-building structure today. Phase four, which never received much discussion due to the failure of the initial bond, called for spending $42.9 million in 2025 to modernize the rest of the facility, bringing the potential total for the high school to $87.78 million.
By contrast, Cheney is proposing a 21-year, $52 million bond in 2017 that district officials believe addresses the overcrowding issues at the high school and also three elementary schools: Betz Elementary in Cheney, Sunset Elementary in Airway Heights and Windsor Elementary on Hallett Road near Marshall. If approved, the bond will also provide $500,000 to move the alternative high school, Three Springs, from the current high school location to near Cheney Middle School, $100,000 to improve security at Salnave Elementary School’s front entrance and $250,000 to purchase land for a future school.
The land purchase is important as, according to information from the district, enrollment is projected to increase over the next 11 years from 4,475 students in 2017 to 5,514 in 2028. Of that 1,039 student increase, 402 are projected to come at the high school level, with 382 at the elementary schools and 256 in the middle schools.
District officials believe they have adequate capacity to handle the growth at the middle school level. In 2010, voters approved a $79 million bond to build two new 750-student middle schools, one on the site of the former Cheney Middle School and another, Westwood, on Hallett Road east of Windsor.
The high school and elementary schools are another matter, and district officials believe that the 2017 bond should address those issues, at least until the current bonds are paid off in 2028 and the district is again eligible for high school state matching funds in 2025. The district last received state matching funds in 2010-2011 to build Snowdon Elementary School in the Fairways area, west of Windsor.
The largest ticket item on the current bond proposal is expansion and renovation of the high school. According to information presented to the school board at a Dec. 1 bond workshop, the $37.8 million price tag includes a new wing with 17 classrooms and a 10-classroom, second story shell, a new practice and physical education gym, fitness center/weight and wrestling rooms, expanded commons, renovated and more secure front entrance along with modernization of 30,000 feet of the existing building to include CTE, administration, the kitchen and science rooms.
The expansion also includes a new, 500-seat performing arts auditorium. The 2015 bond called for a new, 700-seat auditorium, but Superintendent Rob Roettger told the board that upon touring other high schools such as West Valley and Central Valley in Spokane, a 500-seat facility was more in line in meeting Cheney’s desire to accommodate its music and drama programs along with other uses.
At the Dec. 1 meeting, district officials recommended deleting the $2.7 million classroom shell, dropping the overall estimate price to $35.10 million. Roettger told the board they hoped that deleting the shell would send a message to residents in Airway Heights and the West Plains that future high school expansion would likely involve a new facility rather than building onto the existing one.
Regarding the elementary schools, Betz would receive a $3.2 million expansion that includes seven new classrooms. Sunset would see $7.8 million in work that includes 10 new classrooms and a new gymnasium, while Windsor’s $7.25 million in improvements include eight new classrooms, a new multipurpose room and kitchen.
All three would receive improved, more secure front entrances.
While no state matching funds are available, the district’s director of finance, Kassidy Probert, said they are eligible to receive $2.2 million in unhoused student funding, bringing the overall bond total to $52 million.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
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