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Vader School comes down

Monday, August 11, 2008 12:30 AM PDT

By Barbara LaBoe

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The final remnant of the Vader School — the school building itself — is gone. Crews knocked down walls and reduced the school to a pile of rubble this week, capping two years of failed levies and bonds and the dissolution of the school district. The land is now property of the Castle Rock School District, which has constructed a fence to keep anyone from being injured on the former school site.

While most of the main structure is down, work will continue for the next few days cleaning the site and hauling away the debris. The demolition is being done by Hensley's Excavating & General Contracting out of Castle Rock and is being paid for with up to $200,000 the Legislature earmarked specifically for the Vader school.

The 1950s building had to be demolished because Lewis County officials condemned it as unsafe in late 2006.

The work was delayed slightly when additional asbestos tiles were discovered in the floor. The amount was relatively small and the delay was to insure they were removed and disposed of properly, Facilities Manager Henry Karnofski told the school board.

Castle Rock took over the building site after absorbing the former Vader School District last summer. The Vader School Board voted itself out of existence earlier that spring after three failed levy and bond measures left the district unable to balance its books.

Vader students now attend either Castle Rock, Winlock or Toledo schools, but the Castle Rock district absorbed all the land and the building. The district also has redrawn its school board member boundaries to include Vader and is awaiting final state approval.

The future of the school site itself remains unclear.

When it was announced that Castle Rock would absorb Vader, officials said it would be good to keep the land in case a population boom ever called for an elementary school to be added there.

During the last school board meeting board member Glen Paget asked about possibly renting the land out once the building was removed. School officials said they'd report back with options at the next meeting.

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Just a Joe wrote on Aug 10, 2008 11:49 AM:

" Intersting. I understand the old Vader school was old and falling down, however, the CR district offers to keep the property in case of a population boom. Now, for as long as I can remember, the CR population has always hovered between 2000 and 3000 people, personally I don't see a huge boom in the future. Did they not step in and make an offer to at least help replace the old building in hopes of aquiring the land for free? Now my neice has to travel from Vader to CR just to get an education...Brilliant "

Nom D'Plume wrote on Aug 11, 2008 6:45 AM:

" As a CR resident I am still irritated that the citizens of Vader got two years of education for FREE from the taxpayers in CR. When CR absorbed the kids from Vader they were under the understanding that the Vader naysayers would have to pay their fair share of the levies. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Now we have people griping that their children have to go all the way to CR to get an education??? I say "TOO BAD". You got free education for your kids for two years. Rather than griping after-the-fact, you should have campaigned for the levy when you still had a school. Now CR students will suffer because the negative vote casters of Vader are in the CR district. I fear that this will result in abysmal levy and bond votes in the future. I had a conversation with a few of the administrators in CR about the destruction of the Vader school. It was the only viable option at the time. They really tried to find the best way to deal with a bad situation. If Vader wants a school of their own, without busing, they need to get out their wallets and pay for it. "

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