Cleveland High School students and alumni will say goodbye to their 78-year-old building when the school closes for a two-and-half-year renovation at the end of the school year. The renovation is estimated to cost $60.4 million.
CHS students will be moved to the Boren Building in West Seattle while construction takes place. The new Cleveland High School will reopen in September of 2007.
With the school listed as a historic landmark in 1999 by the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, the Seattle Public Schools administration is required to preserve the façade of the original building. Renovation plans include partial demolition of the existing building. They also include adding a new gymnasium/commons building and a new classroom building, according to the Seattle Public Schools Web site.
The newly renovated Cleveland High School will host four smalls school programs that include global studies, environmental and health sciences, arts and humanities, as well as the InfoTech Academy. Student capacity will expand from 783 to 1,000 students.
The last day of school for CHS students is June 21. The final assembly for seniors is slated for June 10.
"We'll try to do something symbolic to close the school," said Carol Coe, activities coordinator at Cleveland. "That will be the last time we have all the students here together in the theater."
Coe added that students have mixed reactions about switching locations, depending on grade level.
"The ones who are genuinely thrilled and excited are the freshmen, who will graduate in 2008, and will be the first graduating class ever from the new Cleveland High School," she said.
Not everyone is thrilled. Some of the older students are reconsidering staying at Cleveland. Juniors are the least excited about the change.
And what about those who have graduated - some of them decades ago?
A June 4 ceremony sponsored by the Cleveland High School Alumni Association will give Cleveland Alumni a chance to walk the original school halls for the last time. Current students will be there to serve as hosts, and Cleveland alumni will get a chance to catch up with old friends. A 24-page commemorative newsletter will be distributed to those attending the event.
An opening ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. with formal greetings by Principal Donna Marshall and Alumni Association President Alison Sing. Chat rooms will be organized according to the alumni's decade of graduation.
Concurrent with the chat-room time will be a question-and-answer session with the project manager for the renovation. During this time, the manager will showcase the work planned for the school.
At 2:30 p.m. the alumni will reconvene on the front steps of the school, and a brief ceremony will be conducted to acknowledge the CHS students who have died in past wars. The U.S. flag will be lowered to half-mast and Taps will be played. At the end of this ceremony, the front doors of the school will be closed and the school bell will ring to signify the official closing of the school, said Sing.
Activities coordinator Coe has been attending alumni association meetings, and says the alumni have mixed feelings about the closure.
"I think they are happy for us, but there is a lot of heart and soul that have gone through the halls of Cleveland, and I think June 4, when they walk the halls for the last time, will be bittersweet for them. They want to make sure we are protecting old artifacts, like beautiful old clocks. Some of them have a lot of sentimental memories," she said.
CHS alumnus Pat Coluccio, class of 1947, is in charge of preserving historical items such as trophies, plaques, newspapers, yearbooks and pictures of the original school. He notes the alumni also want to preserve a historical bench on the CHS grounds.
"For the first two years the items will go into storage, and once the new school opens up, we would like to put them on display for anniversaries and class reunions," Coluccio said. "For the time being, the school has no place to put them."
Some items will be available to buy, such as seats from the old auditorium.
CHS alumnus Don Duncan, class of 1943 and former Seattle Times columnist, is looking forward to his last walk through Cleveland.
"It has changed a lot since the days that we were there - everything has changed. I am going to be down there on June 4 to take my final walk through the halls, before all of the changes," Duncan said. "We'll hear the principal tell us a little bit about what is going to happen, and what the school is going to look like, but mainly I am going to see old friends."
Duncan entered Cleveland High as a 13-year-old freshman in 1940, and went into an Army specialized training program in 1943. Duncan's class of 1943 and the class of 1944 bought the Cleveland Forest, a 130-acre plot of woods in Issaquah, to commemorate CHS students who died in World War II. Plaques for students who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars have since been added.
The non-profit CHS Alumni Association was formed in 1995 in response to a discussion by the Seattle School District involving the potential sale of the Cleveland Memorial Forest to satisfy budget issues.
Sing says that the memorial forest is an extremely important part of CHS history, and should be used as a teaching tool for future generations.
"It's a gift that keeps on transcending decades," Sing asserted. "It teaches citizenship, the value systems and allows us to connect with people of the past, present and future."
She feels the forest can be used as a bridge between older and younger generations.
"In addition to serving as an educational classroom, it would also serve as an eternal war memorial to these people," she said.
Beyond historical items, Sing, Coluccio, and other alumni are working to preserve the spirit of CHS.
"There is a special attachment to this school - there seems to be a special spirit," Coluccio said. "I want to help sustain some of those traditions and value systems that I got from my teachers and from the folks that went to Cleveland."
Julianne Carroll may be reached at editor@sdistrictjournal.com.[[In-content Ad]]
