Officials with the Quilcene School District are looking at a two-story building as the best fit for the school district’s campus property.

Voters will be asked during a special election on Tuesday, April 26 to approve a 20-year, $12.3 million bond to pay for the new elementary school.

If approved, Proposition 1 will help finance an outdated building that’s been in use for eight decades and would be too costly to remodel and bring up to code, according to district officials.

The property tax increase would also be used to construct a new Career and Technical Education Building, and make athletic facilities and field improvements at the Quilcene campus.

The latest conceptual plans for the new elementary school envision a two-story structure being built just south of the existing high school and middle school.

“There’s advantages and disadvantages for either a one-story or a two-story building,” said District Superintendent Frank Redmon.

A two-story building would not be more expensive than a one-story building, Redmon said, as there are trade-offs for both scenarios.

“The push-pull on that is it’s really close to the overall cost,” he added, explaining that a one-story structure would mean a larger building footprint, while going up another floor would require a deeper foundation, stairways, and an elevator.

A two-story building has its advantages, however. Adding a second floor would provide more physical distance between the school buildings on the campus property and put more space between elementary kids and older students, and parents have raised concerns about the district’s youngest students being too close to teens.

“Right now, it looks like a two-story building is the most viable option,” Redmon said.

“The smaller footprint allows us to have some outdoor spaces, both for student movement and for outdoor learning,” he added.

The $12.3 million bond measure, if passed, would be enough to construct the building under the parameters already set for the facility by the district, Redmon noted.

So far, the design of the building is based on eight classrooms, small group rooms, and a shared learning area. The space for Career and Technical Education would be added onto the north end of the existing multipurpose building, with locker rooms and a weight room also added to the northeast end of the building.

Redmon stressed that work on the design of the school will continue, and isn’t yet set in stone.

“It will continue to change and morph as we get further into the process,” he said.

The election is Tuesday, April 26, and most ballots were mailed to voters April 6.

It’s the Quilcene School District’s second try this year in getting the bond measure approved.

The district first asked voters to approve the bond measure during a special election in late February, but that ballot proposal narrowly missed the 60 percent “yes” vote needed for passage. District officials noted that request came up five votes short, with 59.37 percent voting “yes.”

Prop. 1 supporters have said that property taxes will not rise if the measure is passed by voters, and the tax rate will stay the same as the rate currently paid by Quilcene property owners since the passage of the district’s capital levy in 2020.

The tax rate, at $1.74 per $1,000 of assessed value, works out to be about $500 a year for the owner of an average-priced property in the school district, or about $522 annually for the owner of a $300,000 property.