By Eric Mathison

Last year, when Highline Public Schools officials proposed a construction bond to, among other things, rebuild Highline High in Burien, they promised to preserve as much of the nearly century-old historic building as “structurally and financially feasible.”

That was important to me because of my family’s deep connection to the school. All five of us Mathison siblings graduated from Highline. My brother Phil went on to teach and coach there for two decades. His three children also earned diplomas from Highline High.

But more important than my desire to see my alma mater’s beautiful building preserved was my fear that one of the Highline area’s few remaining historic sites would vanish. Beyond the old Masonic Home in Des Moines, I can’t think of another attractive, historic building that remains standing in Highline. There may be some obscure private residences.

Sitting down here in Mexico, I love that every village has a historic plaza and ancient church.

In Highline, I’m not looking for buildings from the 1500s. But something historic from the 1950s would be good.

The school construction bond passed last November and the district hired Bassetti Architects to study how much of the historic structure could be preserved. Bassetti is known for its work on historic school building projects such as Stadium High in Tacoma and Franklin and Roosevelt in Seattle as well as the Highline district’s beloved Camp Waskowitz in North Bend.

Following the study, the technical team of architect, structural engineer, cost consultants, project engineer and district staff have revealed how much of the historic Highline structure can be preserved:

None.

Oh, some bits of the old entry arch maybe could be used as part of the new entry. How much district officials before the election knew or suspected this would be the outcome is not known.

Since the historic elements of the school had already been pretty much gutted in a botched remodeling about 20 years ago, the only key component left to preserve was the north brick wall. In the earlier remodel, they took a functional two-story school with classrooms on both sides of the hall, a small office, great auditorium and cafeteria in the basement and made it into a nonfunctional sprawling campus where students and staff have to keep going out in the cold and back into the main building during the day.

In the latest study, engineers found the north wall had been mostly built with a single layer of bricks backed by wood, soil around the base was loose and most of the bricks couldn’t be reused. Workers could rebuild the wall but the whole thing might just collapse, according to the experts.

An extra $20 million could be taken from the bond budget to attempt to stabilize the soil and wall but that wouldn’t go over very well with the Evergreen and Tyee folks who correctly argue that their buildings are in bad shape, too.

You’ve got to bond together, so to speak, disparate areas with different desires to pass a bond that needs a 60 percent approval vote. That is especially important in a district where the vast majority of voters don’t have kids in school.

That brings us to the Thursday, October 19 “Ask the Architects” public meeting, 6:30-8 p.m., at the Highline High Cafeteria, 225 S.W. 152nd St.

It might be therapeutic to yell at the architects and demand the school be historically preserved. But I’m afraid that train has left the station. Apparently, they can’t even rebuild the school to look like was in the 1920s because of something called “false historicism.”

So the emphasis at the meeting should be on pressuring them to retain as much of the original building’s beautiful and historic look.

To see Highline’s historic buildings, we’ll just have to look at the photos when the historical museum finally opens.

Eric Mathison is the former award winning editor for the Highline Times, now enjoying the sun in Mexico. His roots in the Highline area run deep.