School board right to pursue plans

The Grand Coulee Dam School District leadership is taking a good step forward by preparing for the day when funding becomes available to entities who already have plans in place for improvements.

In fact, that’s exactly how the district got its new school built, by taking the steps necessary to be ready when fortune, or the state Legislature, or Congress, smiles.

When the plans were already in place, the day came that a jobs bill was looking for a place to lay in some green. A sharp state legislator we had working for us knew what to do. Sen. Linda Evans Parlette leveraged that readiness with the needs of other districts on the other side of the state. Before we knew it, the political will was found to build the first school in the state that did not saddle the local district with a debt, which Parlette knew the local district did not have the capacity to carry.

Now, the district might be able to receive a grant it had applied for two years ago. It’s not clear that $2.9 million would be enough to do all that needs to be done to get the district’s athletic facilities up to the level most of its neighboring district display. But with plan in hand, it can keep looking for the next opportunity. So the district is looking for an architect that can help visualize the solutions.

That kind of persistence is how the job will eventually get done — one good step at a time.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher