Westside School, which moved to new quarters for this school year is moving ahead with expansion plans to be carried out this coming July. They include moving some existing 'cottages' (portable buildings) from their previous location next to Explorer West where they shared space until this year.

Head of the school Jo Ann Yockey showed the West Seattle Herald the layout of what will be put in place this summer. They include an early childhood care center and others, all fitted with plumbing and wiring. They will be dismantled into their component parts, placed on a truck and moved the week of July 5, "in the middle of the night" to the south part of the E.C. Hughes property that Westside now occupies.

Two of them will be used for pre-kindergarten classes (they currently have 1 and 1/2).

Faculty parking will move to the north lot (though the playground will remain) and this will require the planting of a low hedge by code. Visitor parking will remain in the south lot.

Adding grade levels
Westside will be adding grade levels too as they expand over time to include middle school grades.
They currently offer pre-school through fifth grade but next year will add sixth and then seventh and eighth grades in the ensuing years. That will mean some adding some additional space too for those grades and the necessary administration offices.

Yockey pointed out that, "Developmentally, moving schools at middle school is not the best time, (...) and that's why we like a K-8 model." While the definition of middle school varies from private to public school, they define it as 6th, 7th and 8th grade. She added that elementary students first learn to read and as they mature they read to learn. Students in middle school are ready to be respected as scholars and treated more like young adults.

Moving to the new location has opened up numerous opportunities for Westside. "We never could have done this in our old location," said Yockey, "coming here has made it all possible."

Making the move isn't cheap, acknowledged Yockey, but they already own the buildings so it made sense to bring them to the new campus.

Summer looks busy too
Over the summer Westside will be hold "Summer Camp" which will run from July 11 to August 19 and consist of a variety of activities from foreign language experiences to outdoor adventure day camps to Sing Out Seattle, a two week musical theater camp conducted by David Koch. All these programs are open to 1st through 6th graders. Most of the programs last a week.

Auctions set to raise money
Westside stages auctions every year to fund their operations and make improvements and everyone pitches in to make or offer items, goods or services on their behalf. Even the children get involved and learn along the way. David Bergler, Director of Admissions described one item being auctioned off in the live auction live auction at the SODO Showbox scheduled for April 2 . "It's a game board with ceramic tiles. The tiles all around it were drawn and painted by the children." Items like this are reasonably typical of what is available ranging from bookcases to garden racks.

While the live auction is sold out they are launching an online auction you can get in on starting today.
In order to view the items you need to register but bidding is open to the public.
http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/AuctionHome.action?vhost=westside…