The Washington School for the Deaf is among Vancouver’s oldest schools. Superintendent Shauna Bilyeu feared the town was forgetting about the school and its students as the campus on Evergreen Boulevard began to show its age.
“I want Vancouver to be proud of us,” she said.
The school just completed a massive expansion and construction of a new campus. Bilyeu said she and her students can’t help but feel emotionally overwhelmed seeing the transformation. Construction began June 1, 2023, meaning the entire new campus was built in just over a year.
Hallways are especially wide to accommodate additional space for conversations in American Sign Language. Natural light pours in through all-glass walls; both the glass and the flooring are matted to limit glare and support visual conversations. Classrooms are littered with the same high-tech gadgets used in other brand-new buildings in Evergreen and Camas school districts.
“For a long time, our buildings were old and derelict. I sometimes felt like people saw us the same,” Bilyeu said while helping to lead a tour of the new campus Friday morning. “It is emotional; the staff that work here invest their heart into the work they do. You see a lot of our students come from disadvantaged places. This represents home, that sense of belonging.”
Also leading the tour were junior students Angel Castro and Kasey Lewandowski, the student government’s president and vice president, respectively. For both, the new buildings elicited an emotion they felt was lacking while at their old building.
“I feel Vancouver can finally see what we do and that we have pride in our school and who we are,” said Lewandowski, who communicates in ASL and uses an interpreter. “I love the high ceilings, all the glass.”
Accessibility in design
The Washington School for the Deaf was founded in 1886 — three years before Washington achieved statehood — and has been located on the current property, 3107 E. Evergreen Blvd., since 1888.
As it’s grown, the school has added and renovated several buildings. The campus has multiple dormitory buildings, as many of its students live outside of Clark County and only return home on the weekends.
Few renovations had been made in the past 50 years, however. Hallways were narrow and dimly lit. Many of the buildings on campus were far away from each other, leaving some areas feeling disconnected or “vacuous,” as one of the new campus’s designers put it. In designing the new space, construction company Skanska and designer Mithun let staff and students take the lead in describing what might work best.
In addition to widened spaces for physical communication, designers used mass timber and other special materials so that flooring in several communal areas would be especially receptive to vibrations.
For example, students who want to get the attention of another can stomp their feet. Physical education teachers were already using those vibrational elements Friday: As students played a game of life-size tic-tac-toe, one staff member banged on a bass drum to tell kids when to start and stop, rather than blowing a whistle.
“I agree with the students that we’ve surpassed our dreams,” Bilyeu said. A prominent member in Washington’s deaf and hard of hearing community, Bilyeu serves on a coalition that examines accessible design and organization for similar state schools across the country.
“I’ve seen what other deaf schools look like. This here will be a national model,” she said.
Mithun partner JoAnn Wilcox has worked as a school designer for 25 years. In every project she’s taken on, she’s noticed and appreciated an increased level of focus on accessibility.
“I think we’ve really learned about the importance of deaf culture and community,” Wilcox said. “I think this is a highlight of my career. It has so much to offer in thinking about all other schools, and I’m excited to bring some of those things to my next projects.”
Preserving history
The school’s rich history is marked with many successes. Undefeated football seasons. Championships. A new trophy display case — which despite its recent construction is already almost filled to the brim with evidence of past triumphs — cements the school’s legacy as critical to Vancouver’s timeline.
The new gymnasium is an especially important piece of the project, Bilyeu said, as the previous one was perhaps the school’s biggest source of community. Right in the entrance is a piece of the old gym floor, nearly 100 years old now.
“The old gym was where people felt the biggest sense of pride. It was the heart of the community in some ways,” she said. “We needed to make sure not to lose that.”
The old gym was on a far corner of campus. The new space lies right in the center, next to the new main entrance. Bilyeu hopes that repositioning can bring more energy to the campus’s living areas.
In the new gymnasium is Lewandowski’s favorite part of the new campus: the weight room. For years, he said, students haven’t had a consistent space to work out. Some machines were in old basements or unused rooms — spaces that were generally dark and uncomfortable.
He grinned from ear to ear seeing the new space, which looks almost like a weight room fit for a professional football team.
In the school’s main office are old trusses from the school’s first building, the “red barn.” The pieces, coupled with a painting of the barn, are critical to remember how Vancouver’s deaf community has grown and navigated adversity.
“In the past, we were limited to only learning physical trades, like gardening,” Bilyeu said. “The deaf have long been marginalized, in my opinion.”
Though just one week into the school year, Bilyeu said enrollment is on the rise, and applications are stacking up. The campus is designed for a maximum capacity of 150 students, which is similar to the previous campus. Demolition continues on parts of the old campus on the corner of Grand and Evergreen boulevards. When finished, the space will be home to new turf fields for sports. The full project is expected to be completed by spring 2025.
Bilyeu hopes that along with a boost to academics, the new campus will teach its students to be proud of who they are.
“For a long time, I felt like this school was Vancouver’s best-kept secret,” Bilyeu said. “I don’t think it is anymore.”
