Schools eye shared facility

After the closed-door session, college board member Stu Watson proposed directing the appropriate staff from each entity to discuss possible collaboration and facilities expansion and bring back a conceptual plan to the college board.

No further description of the facilities expansion was given in open session.

College President Dr. Frank Toda thanked the board for the direction, and said the school district and college had been working collaboratively for six years on dual enrollment, where high school students are enrolled in both the high school and community college.

“We’ve actually moved high school classes up to the college and it’s been going quite well,” Toda said. For almost a year the college has hosted high school students in a welding class, and positive feedback from parents and students shone a light on the possibility of collaboration between the school district and college, Toda said.

Carol Roderick, chair of the school board, said she’d been “very enthused about this [district/college collaboration] concept for a number of years.”

College board member Lee Fairchild said the two staffs shouldn’t “overwork” the conceptual plan they will bring back to the boards.

He suggested focusing on the specifics of the particular location and how it was going to work.

Charlotte Arnold, chair of the college board, said there was no timeframe yet on developing a conceptual plan.

Early last year, a community-based group formed and began months of studying possible locations for a new high school. That group presented its findings to the school board late last fall.

One proposed location was some acreage on college-owned land. However, the acreage, dubbed the Hilltop property, is located uphill, behind the college campus itself, and is within the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

The facilities committee and school board members learned that building in the scenic area would be an almost insurmountable challenge.

District Superintendent Candy Armstrong said the Hilltop site was not under consideration, and interest has shifted focus to the developed site of the college property.