Library tardy for first day

Nearly a year after arsonists destroyed the library at Sacajawea Middle School, dozens of boxes of new books to replace those torched by the blaze sit unopened in an empty classroom.

The novels, encyclopedias and magazines probably won’t find a home on the shelves when school opens Sept. 4, either. The construction of the new library isn’t likely to be finished until the end of the month, district officials said.

“I’ve learned to take it one day at a time,” said librarian Dinah Coble.

The school’s seventh- and eighth-graders have been using a makeshift library housed in a portable classroom on the south Spokane school’s campus since fire destroyed the building just days after the start of last school year.

Three Lewis and Clark High School students pleaded guilty to setting the Sept. 8 blaze and were ordered by a Spokane County court to pay $100,000 in restitution. The students, Harrison M. Seaborn, Quinten M. Glenn and Cody L. Baker, were also expelled from Spokane schools, said Mark Anderson, associate superintendent for support services.

But the restitution the teens will be forced to share is not nearly enough to cover the cost of replacing the facility – a total that has risen to $2.6 million.

“The cost of construction was more (than expected), but that’s true everywhere,” Anderson said.

The cost of cleanup for the entire school was more than $600,000 – including restoring the heating and ventilation system that sucked in thick black smoke and distributed the charred smell throughout the hallways.

The project is taking a little longer than district officials had hoped.

In November, the district said the project would be completed by July. The bid was awarded to Western States Construction of Spokane.

“I was certainly hoping it would be up and ready to go,” Coble said Wednesday. “I’ve been coming by all summer to check on it.”

The roof was finally installed this week, she said.

“My biggest issue is that I don’t have a space to meet with all the new students,” as well as book storage, Coble said.

“We have a ton of new books, but we don’t have any place to keep them,” Coble said.

The temporary library was reduced to just five bookshelves of donated items, and four computers, compared with the 30 computers previously available to students.

Boxes of new books are stacked up in classrooms, and nearby Manito Methodist Church also donated some space for storage.

“We’ve just learned to deal,” Coble said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s what we’ve got.”