Cascade Middle School featured in The Register Guard
Cascade Middle School community breaks ground on new $67 million school
By Miranda Cyr
September 1, 2022
Bethel School District's 66-year-old junior high is getting a $67 million makeover with heavy input from community members and students.
Cascade Middle School students, staff and members of the surrounding neighborhood gathered Wednesday evening behind the school for the groundbreaking ceremony to mark the beginning of construction. Bethel Superintendent Kraig Sproles said the project has been in the works for more than four years.
"While Cascade has been a great school
for many, many years, it definitely needs to be updated," Sproles said.
The new Cascade is being built about 10 feet behind the back of the current school. This way, students can continue attending school as normal throughout the construction process. The new school building is expected to be completed in December 2023. Students will move into the improved Cascade after that winter break.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place the same day as the middle school's walk-through welcome event and the school was buzzing with activity. Several families came out back to join event, and students and teachers used the shovels and posed for photos.
After moving into the new building, the old one will be torn down and the land will be transformed into a large green area for both students and the public to use.
Sproles said this green area was suggested by community and student voices, which the district has been diligent in listening to.
"We've had design meetings with the community, kind of, like an early design where we had like two different options to get feedback from them, what they liked
and what they didn't like, what they wanted to incorporate," Sproles said. "They had some great ideas."
By student request, there will be large windows so students can see the green areas and the mountains to the east. They also requested a "student meeting space," which will be a large common area right in the entry of the school with tables and places for students to chat and mingle.
He added that a big local concern was the preservation of the trees on the property.
All trees will undergo an assessment to determine their health, Sproles said. All healthy trees will be saved and kept on campus.
Apart from the trees, some of the architectural structures of the new building take inspiration from the old, as an homage to its roots.
Cascade was built during the founding of Bethel School District, so there is a lot of sentimental value.
A longtime staple in Bethel
Paul Jorgenson, a member of the Bethel School Board for more than 30 years, attended Cascade Middle School the first year it opened in 1956. He said "not too much" has changed since that time.
"That was our gym right there," Jorgenson said, pointing out areas. "When you walk down the halls (that's) where we had industrial ed, we had woodworking, we had home economics and electronics on
that end. That's all gone out of middle schools now, but I mean, as far as these three wings, the building, the front door, the walkway up the gym, or the cafeteria − it's all the same."
Longtime Bethel School District board member Paul Jorgenson participates in the Cascade Middle School's groundbreaking ceremony, which celebrated the beginning of construction for the new school on Wednesday. Jorgenson attended Cascade the year it opened in 1956.
Jorgenson said all of his memories from attending Cascade as a child are joyful.
He recalled the surrounding area, now clustered with suburban homes, was previously all farmland.
"In fact, probably where we're standing right now, there were cows," Jorgenson said. "It was really rural, but it was good people."
Teachers, staff looking forward to upgrades
At the groundbreaking ceremony, there were few who were more enthusiastic than the Cascade staff members, all donning their green Cascade T-shirts.
Stacie Ray, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Cascade, said many longtime teachers have fond memories of the Cascade building, but she is excited for the big transition.
Ray hopes it will be a "fresh start," especially after the difficulties caused by the pandemic and online learning. "We are so excited and so thankful that it's
happening," Ray said. "The school's got a lot of cuts and bruises. We're so excited just to have a new facility, new building to offer new things to our students that we haven't really had."
She said the classrooms will have more modern technology and resources, which will be a big change for both students and teachers. Instead of having wires strung across ceilings to accommodate the decades of advancing tech, the design will be more streamline for today's learning.
Ray also said the large windows in the new design will open up the classrooms so they will feel less dark and cramped.
