Two of Kitsap County’s school districts have undertaken large projects to improve or replace school buildings, improving student access to technology, school safety and utilization of space on campuses.
Both are either at or near completion.
North Kitsap School District is completing three projects—the most ambitious being a 10-classroom addition to Poulsbo Middle School, which connects its main building to the lunchroom and the PE area. “It replaces ten portables that we had behind the school,” said Jenn Markaryan, director of communications for NKSD. “It features some new STEM facilities and a few gathering spaces for students. The STEM classroom is designed to support a wide range of hands-on activities and learning styles.”
Markaryan said the double classroom layout can expand into a larger lab by pulling back a movable partition and updated counters and sinks. The building should be completed by late October or early November. “Students no longer have to walk along the road to get from one building to the other, and it’s much safer,” she said.
The district also is building gymnasiums at Suquamish and Wolfie Elementary Schools, allowing PE classes to happen while lunch is going on in the cafeteria, which is often where those classes take place when indoors. “It’s a great addition of dedicated space for PE,” Markaryan said. “It’s been hard at our elementary schools to run PE programs and serve lunch at the same time, and this eliminates that issue.”
The gyms should be finished by late fall.
The Poulsbo project cost around $16 million, while each of the new gyms cost $4.9 million with funds coming from passage of the NKSD’s 2022 Facilities and Technology Capital Levy.
Meanwhile, Central Kitsap saw the opening of a new building at Fairview Middle School in Bremerton. Students are using the facility with the beginning of this school year. “The original Fairview was three separate buildings,” Fairview principal Travis Quinn said. “There was a main building where we housed all our classrooms, there was a separate music building and a gym.”
Quinn said that whereas the separate buildings required outdoor hallways, and transitioning students between the buildings regardless of the weather, the new building houses all of the classrooms and student areas under one roof.
Construction began in January of 2023. “We moved in during June, and last week we got all 630 kids under one building,” Quinn said. “The previous building didn’t really have many windows, and it wasn’t an ideal learning environment, whereas the new building has gorgeous windows in every classroom and all the classrooms are really well lit.”
In addition, the school has more flexible spaces for, as Quinn said, “kids to be kids,” including an oversized stairwell, where students can sit and read, study or just spend time together.
Fairview is also a much safer building. “In the old building, there were something like forty exterior doors, and in this one we have three sets of main doors, so it’s much more secure,” Quinn said.
A new parking lot is still under construction but should be complete this winter. The total cost of the project is $73.8 million, which comes from both state construction funds and a federally funded program for schools that serve federally connected children, such as Native Americans or military dependents.
