POULSBO — Another strong showing of Spectrum Community School support anchored the front end of the North Kitsap School District board meeting Feb. 22.

Amidst the controversy raised by the possibility of losing school principal and patriarch Chris Wendelyn next year, residents brought concerns to the board about a controversial recommendation made in regard to the alternative school’s anticipated structural addition.

“We don’t want to be kept in the dark about changes that are happening,” Spectrum Support Team spokeswoman Tracey Beck told the board.

NKSD Supt. Gene Medina replied that there would be time to elaborate on many of the Spectrum community’s concerns at a meeting at 7 p.m. tonight at the school off West Kingston Road.

With regard to Spectrum’s anticipated multipurpose room — which will likely be a topic of discussion at that meeting — here’s how the project has evolved.

At the proverbial 11th hour of the formation of the Capital Programs Bond — which was approved by voters in May 2001 and provided funding for Kingston High School as well as numerous other projects throughout the district — $600,000 was set aside for a broadly described stand-alone multipurpose room to be built at Spectrum in 2005.

Unlike all of the other projects in the capital program, there wasn’t much structure to the Spectrum project at that time, NKSD director of capital facilities Robin Shoemaker said. After building up steam and accruing a master plan for a stand alone building in 2005 and 2006, the project stalled past its deadline and has seemingly moved backwards in 2007. Of its initial $600,000, $580,000 remains, Shoemaker said.

Cost estimates for the stand alone building came in higher than expected ($1.2 million according to Harthorne and Hagen Architects of Seattle) at the end of last school year. As a result, the project was then recommended — by the NKSD Capital Facilities Advisory Committee at what would be its final meeting in February — to be downgraded to a secondary option. This option would add additional square footage to Spectrum’s current lunch room space and rearranges it into a multipurpose room.

Spectrum’s staff wasn’t involved in the re-design process, nor do they or any members of the project’s educational specification team support the new option, said Spectrum teacher Bob Geballe. Geballe said the proposal depletes a portion of the current science room space and is smaller than the proposed stand alone option.

“My comments are more about the process than anything else at this point,” Spectrum teacher Phil Davis told the school board Feb. 22. “I feel that I have been misled, manipulated and then hurried up into watching decisions where my colleagues and I am ignored.”

“I think there has been a tremendous amount of process,” Shoemaker said. She said typically speaking, most schools affected by the bond weren’t directly involved in the CFAC processes

Inside the committee, local architect and CFAC member Craig Curtis said Spectrum’s piece of the capital program was given a plenty of thought by committee members.

“There was probably more discussion on Spectrum than any other project in the bond,” Curtis said. “The committee really feels that this (recommendation) is a win-win situation in that it provides a huge boost to Spectrum with a great central space and allows for future expansion.”

Unfortunately, Curtis said, the budget discussion that led to the second alternative ultimately becoming the CFAC’s recommendation took place solely between the committee and the NKSD administration.

Interestingly, it seems the financial knowledge that made a stand alone option not feasible was there from the beginning.

“Clearly, there is not enough money in the bond for a stand alone multipurpose room, the funds were never there to do it,” said Curtis, whose firm the Miller Hull Partnership designed a master plan for a stand alone option pro bono. “The budget just doesn’t allow for a stand alone facility with the amenities to make it function.”

It was clear to a few people involved in the project that the $600,000 was not going to be enough for a new building, including Shoemaker who was hired in the fall of 2001 after the bond had been passed. She said projected overhead and design costs would likely take away almost $200,000 of that total.

However, neither she nor Medina could identify where the figure of $600,000 came from during the bond process, and said there are no specific records attached to it.

The cost estimates for an integrated multipurpose room on the other hand, have come in a little above $850,000 as estimated by Harthorne and Hagen, Shoemaker said. That still leaves more than $200,000 extra the school board would have to approve before any construction could begin.

So, once again, the project has stalled.