The lot, 8614 N.E. 25th Ave., is the proposed site for a new Vancouver Public Schools elementary school. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian files)Photo Gallery
Vancouver Public Schools is pumping the brakes on plans to remove a proposed new elementary school from its slate of bond-funded projects, saying it wants to give the community more opportunities to weigh in.
As part of its construction campaign, the district is slated to build two elementary schools — a “school of choice” near downtown named the Vancouver Innovation, Technology and Arts Elementary School, or VITA, and a neighborhood school at 8614 N.E. 25th Ave., in Hazel Dell. The district is now considering cutting the latter campus from its project list, citing increasing costs and declining district enrollment.
The board was supposed to vote on the matter today, but officials postponed the meeting, noting that a previous public hearing on the subject drew zero speakers. The district also announced that it will host a series of community forums at Hazel Dell-area elementary schools after the district’s winter break — by which point, the new school board will be seated.
“Although the current board has examined this matter for over a year in several work sessions and briefings, we want to ensure that our community is fully aware of the factors that warrant a delay in building this proposed new school,” board president Mark Stoker said in a district news release.
The decision to postpone the meeting came after community members, incoming school board members and sitting director Wendy Smith raised questions about the process. Kyle Sproul, Tracie Barrows and Kathy Decker, who won seats on the school board this month, wrote a joint email to the board urging them to suspend the vote.
“The voters approved the bond, showing tremendous support for our district,” they wrote. “It seems hasty, if not reckless, to make changes to the voter-approved projects without offering more explanation for the change and for more opportunity for community participation in the conversation.”
Enrollment, cost challenging list
Vancouver Public Schools officials say unprecedented “marketplace construction conditions” have inflated costs by about 7 percent, putting the district about $17 million over where it expected to be in its capital campaign. The district has spent or approved about $250 million in expenses so far, with more than another quarter-million to go in the $551 million school bond.
“It’s the added 7 percent that is the culprit here that we hadn’t and couldn’t have anticipated,” said Assistant Superintendent Todd Horenstein, who oversees facilities and construction for the 23,000-student school district.
Voters in 2017 approved a $458 million bond so the district could build new schools and improve existing facilities. The district will receive about another $93 million in state matching funds and grants on top of that. In previous estimates, the district had projected a 5 percent inflation in construction costs over the course of construction.
Elementary schools, from design to construction to furniture, can cost about $40 million, plus ongoing operations costs including staff salaries, maintenance costs and utilities.
Horenstein said declining enrollment in the Hazel Dell area makes that campus a logical cut from the bond list. The campus, if built, would draw students from five surrounding elementary schools: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Hazel Dell, Minnehaha, Sarah J. Anderson and Walnut Grove. Anderson and Walnut Grove in particular consistently rank among the school district’s largest elementary schools.
But collective enrollment at the five schools has steadily declined in the last five years from 3,146 students in 2014-2015 to 2,996 students in 2018-2019, according to data from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
“We don’t have a population to fill the school,” Horenstein said. “We would be overbuilding, which would be expensive.”
Questions about process
Vancouver Public Schools officials say they’ll host community forums about the bond at the five affected elementary schools, though noting that they’ve heard little pushback so far on the proposed change.
The issue has nonetheless garnered social media chatter and skepticism from Smith, who on Nov. 12 spoke against the steps to remove the school from the project list. Smith said the district hasn’t done enough outreach yet to know whether cutting a neighborhood school will be the right call.
“I understand the realities of the budget, and we may have to trim something off the bond list of projects, but I want to make sure we’re making the right choice and picking the choice that’s going to be best for students and their families,” Smith said.
She also expressed frustration that the district appears to be prioritizing a magnet school over a neighborhood school. Students at VITA will likely come from surrounding neighborhoods and elsewhere in the district like existing “programs of choice” throughout the district.
Smith’s children attend Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School, one of the largest elementary schools in the district with 734 students.
“The neighborhood that the 25th Avenue elementary would be serving, the schools around it are struggling with overpopulation,” Smith said. “They’re struggling with challenges to be alleviated directly by creating another neighborhood school.”
On her public Facebook page, former school board member Kathy Gillespie criticized the board for offering little notice of a public hearing on Nov. 12. The district issued public notice of the hearing on its website on Nov. 8, operating well within state law requiring at least 24 hours notice of a meeting.
Still, Gillespie says the district’s decision to notice the meeting the Friday before a holiday weekend, while “providing little evidence of its claims that the 25th Avenue school is not needed,” left community members without enough information.
She also questioned the district’s apparent decision to move forward with VITA at the expense of a neighborhood school, calling the magnet campus a “shiny object.”
“Voters, with their ‘yes’ vote, signed a contract with the district to build all of the projects on the list,” Gillespie wrote. “Now VPS wants to break the contract and write a new one dumping a neighborhood school which would provide relief to families in the Sarah J. Anderson Elementary region in favor of a downtown school with no natural student body.”
