Described by Superintendent of Schools Susan Halliday as “bursting at the seams,” Philomath Academy finds itself at capacity in the space that it was provided a little more than two years ago in the school district’s administration building on Applegate Street.
To solve the problem, Halliday and her team have been considering various options, such as purchasing or leasing in the community, renovating existing space or just moving forward the best that they can with the current configuration.
“We actually did some looking a couple of times at the old Philomath Family Medicine building,” Halliday told the School Board at Thursday night’s meeting. “We went and walked through it to be able to see if something like that might be an opportunity — more for the movement of the district office that would provide the academy with more space.”
Rubicon Investments has the building listed for sale at $1.15 million. Built in 1977, it was vacated by Philomath Family Medicine in 2023 when the health clinic moved to a new building on the west end of town. The single-story building, located at 1219 Applegate St., has 5,761 square feet of space.
Upon first glance, Halliday said “It kind of had that exciting flare but as we started to think about it more and more,” the purchase and then renovation costs began to sink in.
“We’d have to carpet and paint and there’d be a couple of walls you’d need to knock out and some different kinds of things and then running the technology lines there to make sure that we would have the internet,” Halliday said. “And just simply the purchase price.”
Interest was serious enough for the school district to arrange for a second visit to the site. But after conferring, it was decided that the price was just too steep.
“We had a conversation and said it really is not where we are budgetarily fiscally prudent for us to put a million dollars into a facility and make sure that we can have the renovations and all kinds of things like that,” Halliday said.
Halliday said the building could also be leased.
“If we were to get into it, because of the cost, we would look to purchase rather than lease,” Halliday said. “It just didn’t seem fiscally prudent to go there so we’ve backed out of that look.”
As of mid-March, Philomath Academy’s enrollment stood at 86 students. The online-accessible school has been stressing in-person attendance to its students and currently, just a single classroom for middle and high school students is available. Halliday reported that the Philomath Academy classroom is consistently full in the mornings.
“We’re still looking for how to take a look at academy space,” Halliday said. “Now we know that a purchase in the community isn’t in the realm of what would be a prudent decision at this point, what are the other things that we can look at as we continue to move forward?”
Besides the crowded conditions for Philomath Academy, the district office end of the building is cramped as well. For example, Halliday mentioned a possible future hiring of a part-time human resources director but “we don’t have a place to put them — we just don’t.”
Philomath Academy launched as a full K-12 alternative school in the fall of 2020 with space in the high school’s library. In January 2023, the school moved to the school district office.
Halliday said it’s not a good fit for various reasons to move the academy back to the high school and utilizing space in modulars outside of the middle school also does not work with no access to restrooms.
“It’s all of those kinds of things that we’re taking a look at right now to be able to say, ‘what might make the most sense?’” Halliday said.
School Board member Ryan Cheeke brought up the expandable possibilities at Clemens Primary School — a building constructed 25 years ago with the option of someday adding a new wing. Cheeke asked if that could be space to be utilized in some way at possibly a lower cost than purchasing elsewhere.
Halliday responded that building a new wing onto Clemens Primary could be a possible option for the district if the cost falls within the capacity of a 2030 facilities construction bond.
“It’s really about what makes sense, if anything, to do right now in another way that could give us some additional space in the interim until we can get to that bonding time,” Halliday said.
