District eyes public facility use

The Shelton School District is revising its policies on how the public uses school facilities, emphasizing that student use takes priority.

The Shelton School Board discussed the proposed revisions at its regular meeting July 9. The board can make the revisions official with a vote at its next meeting Aug. 27.

“It has not been touched, if the dates are correct, in 20 years,” Robert Herron, the district’s director of facilities management and construction, told the board. “And so the policy is probably outdated, as well as the procedures have been updated more recently but still not meeting our current needs and things that are going on.”

A district committee that includes residents, faculty, facility users and the district’s athletic department met from April through June to discuss revisions, Herron said. The proposed revisions are recommended by the Washington State Schools Directors’ Association, he said.

“We organized things for better readability to bring some of the important pieces forward,” he said.

The proposed revision adds a new opening sentence: “The board supports community use of school facilities in an effort to better the educational, cultural, social and ethical standards of the community.” The revision would retain the beginning of the next sentence — “The board considers school facilities to be part of the community and should be available for community use … ” — and then adds “but will be expected to compensate the district for such use to ensure that funds intended for education are not used for other purposes. The district shall establish fee schedules for this purpose. District curricular and extra-curricular activities will have priority for use of school facilities.”

Another proposed revision adds, “The district does not discriminate based on race, creed, religion, color, national origin, age, honorably-discharged veteran or military status, sex, sexual orientation including gender expression or identity, marital status, the presence of any sensory, mental or physical disability or the use of a trained guide or service animal by a person with a disability and provides equal access to Boy Scouts of America and other designated youth groups.”

The revisions “update WSSDA’s definitions for discrimination and making sure we’re bringing our policy into a more inclusive modern environment,” Herron said.

In the proposed revision, applications to use school facilities must be submitted at least 30 days in advance for nondistrict uses, and 10 days for district uses. It would also add “Failure to pay for damages or invoices could result in future loss of use until repaid or appropriate and agreed to payment arrangements are made.”

The proposed revisions also adds newer facilities and additions owned by the district, including the multi-purpose room inside the Bordeaux Elementary School gym, the STEM room at Mountain View Elementary School, and the baseball and fastpitch fields at Shelton High School.

School Board member Becky Cronquist asked about the origins of the district’s partnership with the Shelton YMCA on the Shelton High School pool.

“They came to the district and negotiated an agreement with the superintendent at that time and the athletic director at that time,” said Brenda Trogstad, the assistant superintendent of finance and operations. “They thought it would be a good community partnership. There’s a few things that need to be fine-tuned and I think we can still have them there, but just a few fine-tuned things.”

Board Vice Chair Keri Davidson said a factor in the agreement “was just the management of the chemicals in the pool because we lost a really great employee at the high school who managed the pool and with the YMCA having a pool, they could have one person who did both and so there was a partnership borne out of that.”

Trogstad stressed that the district’s students have top priority in the arrangement.

“We do have first dibs if we want to use the pool. It’s our pool first, so our schedule comes first, so we put together our swimming lessons, and our schedule we do at the high school, training the lifeguards and that type of thing, we put all that together first and give it to the Y, so the district does come first in that agreement,” she said.