I have been part of the Long Term Facilities Task Force since last December. It was run by an Associate Superintendent who acts as the Director of Facilities for the District. I question her knowledge about facilities planning. Our "experienced" school board has let her run the district's facilities planning for the past decade.
The plan that the task force was guided into proposing is nearly identical to the Feb 11, 2014 bond measure that failed. It's just displayed in the planning table in a different order. The task force will be presenting it to the board at the October 26 study session. It is estimated to cost $775,000,000 - $900,000,000.
The new plan will be horrible for Redmond. It will add 400 more students to RHS. It will build a new middle school at Redmond Ridge - meaning that all current Evergreen students will be sent to the new Redmond Ridge Middle School. This means that 1000 middle school students from inside Redmond will be sent out to Evergreen. So Redmond El, Horace Mann-east of Hartman Park, Einstein, parts of Rockwell and probably McAuliffe in Sammamish will be feeder schools for Evergreen. This is nuts.
During the Task Force meetings we were never allowed to discuss whether it was a good idea to build the new middle school at Redmond Ridge - the Assoc. Superintendent's response was, "We haven't yet decided where the new middle school will go." She's inaccurate. I did a public records request and it is clear that the new middle school will go at Redmond Ridge.
The current Long Term Facilities plan is unsatisfactory because we have a school board that is asleep at the wheel. If we vote our current board back into office, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves for the results.
By Susan Wilkins
$775 MILLION? Is that correct?
ReplyDeleteIt DOES make sense to build a new middle school in Redmond Ridge. RR has a HUGE population of children and between RR and RRE, I estimate there will be at least 250 middle schoolers in each grade within a few short years. Locating a new middle school in RR would make SENSE as transportation costs would be low due to density. The district also pulled some strings, wrote some emails to prevent the marijuana facility from being permitted there.
ReplyDeleteOne important question that the district is NOT planning appropriately for, is WHERE will all these kids go to HIGH SCHOOL? Adding 400 seats at RHS is poor leadership.
Don't see what choice they have.
ReplyDeleteGiven that bonds have been failing, the school district can not afford to buy urban sites at 10-20 times what it would cost in the unincorporated area. The district could explore selling some urban sites to cash in on the inflated land prices there and use the funds generated to build larger schools on the remaining urban sites, but that's disruptive.
Goes back to the low impact fees being charged for new development. Its a disgrace that it costs more to connect to sewer than it does in school impact fees.