Wenatchee School District Facilities Committee Decides to Pass on Federal Building

The Wenatchee School District Facilities Committee decided to recommend that the School Board not move forward with the acquisition of the former federal building. The district had been considering turning the building into a high school with a focus on science, technology, engineering, math and arts. The 43-year-old building is currently owned by the General Services Administration (GSA) and was home to the U.S Postal Service until June 2015. It was built in 1973, the same year as Wenatchee High School (WHS).

The Facilities Committee has been meeting since last year, studying solutions for WHS, which is overcrowded and in need of modernization. At their September 7 meeting, the committee heard from architectural and construction consultants about the feasibility of turning the federal building into a high school. They estimated the costs of the project to be $40-50 million dollars. Many committee members toured the former federal building on August 31.

After a great deal of discussion the committee voted unanimously to abandon consideration of acquiring the building.

Some key factors that played into the decision:

1. Although the building may be deeded to the school district at no cost, the committee decided that the estimated $40-50 million dollars to modernize the facility would not be a good use of public dollars.
2. If the modernization dollars were available, a better option would be to build a new facility on existing school district property that could be designed to meet the needs of 400-500 students.
3. The short timeline to complete the application without having time to study and develop an academic model for the campus would be a big risk and gamble for the school district.
4. Modernizing the existing high school to meet 21st century learning standards for 1,800 students will require the use of the current debt capacity for construction of $120,000,000 dollars—plus a potential state match of about $30 million.  Allocating $40-50 million dollars for the federal building project would greatly impact the modernization dollars needed for WHS. The committee felt it would not be a good use of local dollars, considering that we will not be eligible for state match dollars at WHS for another 30 years.

The committee will be sharing their recommendation with the board at the next regular School Board Meeting on Tuesday, September 13 at 6:00 PM. The public is invited to attend.

The committee will be meeting again on September 21 to finalize their recommendations regarding WHS. They will share their final recommendations with the school board at the September 27th regular board meeting.