Seattle Schools Community Forum

Well, this is interesting.  News from the Puget Sound Business Journal. As you may remember, the former Federal Reserve building - a federal building - was closed years ago.  Under federal law, entities and groups may apply to use the building for public purposes.  The Downtown Association was very interested in the district applying so that downtown would have an elementary school.  It's a good location, near the downtown library.  District facilities director, Flip Herndon, toured the building with some reps from the DSA earlier this year.  He is decidedly not in favor because of the many issues of getting the building ready (and he already has a lot on his plate).  He believes it might take up to $40M to get it ready and the district only has about $5M.   He said around 460 kindergarten through fifth graders live within a mile and a half of the former bank branch. There was a homeless group applying for its use and they had first rights...

Update: according to the Times some non-profits are already circling the building but I suspect that if the district got an application together, they might move up that list given they are a public entity. Apparently, though, (and this is just what I thought the district would say), the Times is reporting Flip Herndon as saying that it would take a lot of work as a school and at what cost.   He's right as the building has asbetos, seismic retrofitting and updating work to be done (the Times cites a figure of $40M). But honestly, is this looking a gift horse in the mouth?  Of course, nothing is truly free but compared to the costs of finding land and building, this may be the best chance the district has.  I felt certain the district wouldn't want to divert off its "Strategic Plan" for anything.  They truly need help in looking at the vast facilities and capacity problems - hello, City? End of update. I received what I believe is a fairly amazing pres...