Rural School Districts in Washington - Bickleton School District

Bickleton School District

The town of Bickleton in Klickitat County is served by Bickleton School District No. 203. As of October 2004, the district has one school an enrollment of 116 students:

In 1880 the people of Bickleton organized school district No. 210, and built a small box school house. Henry C. Hackley was the first instructor of the twelve pupils- Mrs. Osborne, a widow taught the second term. Mr. Bickle donated an acre of land at the east end of town for another school. The original public hall was converted to the grade school. It served the community until 1897 when it was removed to make room for present, two-story building. The contract was let for $1300. Eight grades were taught, seventy pupils in all, T.C. Anderson was the principal, Miss Jesse Forker was his assistant. In November 10, 1953 the Bickleton community constructed a new $107,645.12 brick school building. The building was built from May 15, 1952 to November 10, 1953. There were seventy-one grade school students attending this beautiful building and there were twenty-four high school students.

As of October 2004 Bickleton School District, which changed to school district No. 203 at some point, had an enrollment of 116 students. After recent developments and investments in both wind and landfill gas sustainable energy projects in the Bickleton area the School Superintendent, Rick Palmer, huddled for two years beginning in 2008 with the county assessor crunching numbers from wind energy developers before going to voters with an $8.9 million bond measure to build the new school. The old 50’s era schools not only lacked adequate HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and septic systems but were also outdated as far as structural aspects and energy efficiency.

The School District contracted with Hill International Inc. in Spokane to perform both construction management services and building commissioning services. Mountain States Construction was awarded the contract as the general contractor and ground was broken in 2010 on the new $10.5 million, 42,000-square-foot school building to replace the old Bickleton School District’s two 1950s-era schools. The new school building, which opened in the fall of 2011, boasts many advanced, state of the art energy efficient design features. The updated facilities, infrastructure and athletic grounds provided for the students is also of the latest technology allowing students a great learning environment for many years to come. As of 2012 the sprawling 500-square-mile rural school district still educates an average of 100 students each year in their new state of the art school building.

• Bickleton School

References:

• Bickleton School District No. 203
• School District Report Card