Committee tours Washington Elementary

SANDPOINT — Members of a new Lake Pend Oreille School District committee learned first-hand why Washington Elementary School is in need of facility improvements at their fourth meeting Tuesday.

With steam pipes at the end of their life, a fire alarm system ready for repair, and a roof that does not meet snow load requirements, the district’s Long Range Facility Planning Committee members said they are ready to tackle needed updates.  

The committee was created to develop a comprehensive plan for district buildings, which add up to 538,258 square feet of building space, and which sit on over 150 acres of LPOSD property.

"You may remember that facilities — improving school safety and addressing deficient building conditions — was identified as the number one community priority in last year's survey,” Superintendent Dr. Becky Meyer said at the November board meeting.

Inspired by those statistics, the district established a committee to review its buildings and their condition. The committee has been discussing funding options for capital projects and facility conditions at recent meetings.

“This committee is made up of community members from each region of the district, who meet to better understand the current state of our facilities and seek to prioritize solutions to some of the challenges of our aging school infrastructure," Meyer said. 

Moving forward, the committee will meet at school buildings in need of updates each month, starting with the buildings with the lowest BCEF, or building condition evaluation form, scores. On-site meetings allow members of the committee to engage with the space they are discussing as they consider its future. 

The committee members carry the “building conditional evaluation” along with them during their tour of the building where the meeting is held so that they can see why the school received particular ratings on various components, LPOSD officials said. Components include exterior building conditions, interior building conditions, mechanical systems, and safety/building codes.

During the Washington Elementary meeting, committee members observed and learned about low evaluation scores on windows, low ADA accessibility, and limited storage, among other things. 

“My biggest wish would be for people to not have to work or teach in closets,” Natassia Hamer, principal at Washington Elementary said during the meeting. “If we … end up moving sixth grade to be part of the middle school, it would result in two more classrooms, which could alleviate some of our space restraints.”

The committee currently has around 35 members, among them Dr. Elizabeth Wargo whose daughter attends Washington Elementary.

“It is a true pleasure to learn about the state of our facilities and the incredible amount of creative and hard work that it takes to provide high quality learning in these spaces,” Wargo said. 

Children deserve better places to learn, she said, noting that recent flooding at Sandpoint Middle School caused by a broken water main is an example of the need for the committee. 

“As much as adults work incredibly hard, the recent middle school closures are an example of that which hard and creative work cannot fix,” she said. “Our district is like most others in the state — it faces systematic facility problems.”

The next LRFPC Meeting will be held at Sandpoint High School on Jan. 16 and is open to the public.