OPINION: Inlet View rebuild is the right plan

I’m writing in response to several opinions shared in recent weeks — including one from my old schoolmates John Crittenden and Jim Renkert — regarding the Inlet View rebuild on this year’s school bond. I want to express my strong support for the rebuild of Inlet View in its current design.

I should begin by saying that, like John and Jim, I share a history of the school that goes back to its beginning in 1957. I and my siblings attended from its opening days, my children attended, and I have grandchildren there now. I grew up in the neighborhood, and two of my adult children live within a block of the school.  I’ve been happily engaged with this school, its teachers, students, and the building itself, in one form or another for 67 years.

For the past decade, I’ve followed the discussions of the Inlet View rebuild — an essential capital project that will ensure the safety of the children in the school in numerous ways. For instance, the current building lacks a sprinkler system; it does not have clear line-of-sight from the office to the school entrances; wastewater leaks out onto the playground in the fall and spring. In addition, the building has only one multi-purpose room, which must be used as both the gym and cafeteria, limiting the time each week children can spend getting physical education. The current location of the school building on the lot leaves a significant marshy area in the playground, which is unusable most of the year, and is a terrible waste of play space. The configuration of the student drop-off area creates a danger from traffic weaving through the neighborhood, where children are walking and biking to and from school during pick-up and drop-off. And nearly seven decades of wear and tear have left their mark on a well-loved school. All these issues are addressed in the new plan.

In their letter, my former schoolmates Messrs. Crittenden and Renkert worry that by changing the orientation of the school, the entrance will not suit kids who walk or bike to get there. I respectfully disagree – their analysis ignores the fact that most Inlet View students actually come from east of the school (as I did, walking every day from K Street), or from Forest Park, where they likely take the bus or arrive by car. The new entrance, facing east, will be more accommodating for these students. The entrance and new drop-off area will also now face the direction where most cars will be coming into the neighborhood, reducing the number of neighborhood streets parents must traverse to get kids to and from school. The Westchester Lagoon area is not the only ‘neighborhood’ served by the school, and the entrance will be welcoming to the entire part of South Addition from which it draws its students.

We can see examples of other remodeled schools, such as Turnagain Elementary, where the entrance and drop-off zones now face the arterial road of the neighborhood, in their case Northern Lights Boulevard. This works well: Students walk and bike to Turnagain from both the north and south and this does not present a major obstacle. Other students walk in towards the front of the school and the vehicle traffic is easily able to get directly into the parking lot from the road, without having to navigate neighborhood streets filled with walking and biking children. It’s a significantly safer design than if the back of the school were facing Northern Lights.

For the many reasons listed above, the new orientation of Inlet View will be superior to the current one. While it’s true a portion of the classrooms will have windows facing northeast, like many of the existing classrooms, it would be nearly impossible to design a school in Alaska where all the classrooms have windows facing south to absorb winter sunlight.

The new design of Inlet View school is thoughtful, has incorporated years of neighborhood feedback, and is the right school at the right time. How truly illogical it would be to continue to spend money on expensive repairs to a seven-decades-old building that has serious safety concerns, rather than to build what is needed now. Every year we delay building this new school, the eventual rebuild becomes more expensive. And because the new design includes essential safety improvements, we would be putting our children’s (and grandchildren’s) safety at risk through delay.

Please vote yes on Proposition 1.

Susan Sullivan is a former state legislator and nonprofit executive. She has lived in Alaska her whole life, attended Inlet View Elementary, is a current grandparent of Inlet View students, and her family has lived in the Inlet View neighborhood for 75 years.

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