$17 million Valley Pathways school is under construction

PALMER — Probably the most important thing the Valley Pathways school under construction will do is give that institution a permanent home.

“They’ve been in portables for 14 years,” Robert Scott, project manager for the Mat-Su Borough, said during a recent tour of the facility. “In a variety of locations, too.”

The new school building under construction at the end of France Road off of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, is a modified version of the Su Valley Jr./Sr. High School built in Trapper Creek after that school burned down in 2007.

Valley Pathways is an alternative high school built to serve the same type of students as Burchell High School. According to its website, Pathways was opened “in response to the growing number of students that Burchell was serving from both Palmer and Colony high’s attendance areas.”

Scott said the project budget is $17.8 million. That money comes from a large raft of bonds voters passed in 2011. Money from those bonds also is paying for the Mat-Su Day School and the Joe Redington Sr. Jr./Sr. High School in Knik, among other projects.

Pathways’ school site is right next to the portables it has been housed in. Currently on a well, the site has been notorious for having water problems, so Scott said the borough decided to hook Pathways into the city of Palmer water system.

Other site issues necessitated a lot of dirt work. Scott said that on one part of the site, they had to cut a hill down by 58 feet and in another had to fill in a 72-foot hole. Getting trucks to the bottom of that hole required three switchbacks. Also, they had to design for wind, which whips through the site off of France Road.

But, Scott said while pointing to sweeping mountain views, it’s one of the prettiest locations for a school the district has.

Similar to Su Valley, classrooms are paired up with a “flex room” in between.

“It’s worked out very well and that’s why we’ve brought it with us here,” he said. “If need be, a single teacher can supervise students in two locations.”

He said that a lot of glass went into the construction, which emphasizes natural lighting.

“There’s going of be a lot of times during the school year where you’re not going to need to have lighting on in the building,” he said.

Pathways also includes a full-court gymnasium, an auditorium and space for a real kitchen with griddles and freezers, different from the warm-up kitchens a lot of district schools have, but useful for teaching cooking classes, Scott said.

Jay Bennett, project superintendent for Collins Construction, said the project is moving into painting in the classroom area, on track for a “substantial completion” date of June 1.

Asked about his favorite part of the project, Bennet pointed to a striking angled wall running down the classroom hallway and to an angled pillar helping support the awning out front.

But, wait, wasn’t that kind of a pain to build?

“That’s what keeps it from being humdrum,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.