The Washougal School District has abandoned its plan to purchase a 32-acre rural property as a future school site.
Following the release of a concerning environmental report, the Washougal School Board voted unanimously Jan. 28 to terminate the district’s purchase-option agreement with a Woodland development company and rescind the district’s request that the property, 2400 S.E. 341st Court, be brought into Clark County’s urban growth boundary.
The school district had intended to use the property to build a school in the future, but Interim Superintendent Aaron Hansen said Clark County’s environmental report revealed that the property has potential riparian setbacks along three streams running across the site.
“It is unclear how much work would need to be done to mitigate impacts or work around the setbacks,” Hansen told school board members during the Jan. 28 meeting. “With the setbacks, assuming no mitigation to reduce them, we are not sure this property can work for our purposes.”
The school district entered an agreement with Kysar Development in 2020 that gave the district an option to purchase the property by Dec. 31.
In October, the school board approved a resolution authorizing the district to exercise its purchase option to buy the property for $1.025 million.
Following the school board’s October decision, residents near the property told school district officials that they worried building a school on the site would disrupt the area’s ecosystem and harm wildlife.
Opponents also said they were concerned that the property lacked fundamental infrastructure, such as a sewer system and decent roads, that would be required for any future school development.
“We are not taking a position of ‘not in my backyard’ mentality. This is really about the property itself. Will a school work in this type of topography? We heard about wetlands. We heard about slope. It’s just not a well-suited piece of land,” Washougal resident Rick Jarchow said during the board’s Jan. 28 meeting.
In late December, district leaders negotiated with Kysar Development to extend the option-to-purchase agreement to June 30 to give additional time to request more environmental assessments of the property and to reach out to residents who might be impacted by the purchase.
On Jan. 28, the results of the new environmental report and questions posed by neighbors prompted the school board to halt the property purchase. Hansen said school district leaders will continue to search for sites that could someday accommodate a new school, parking lot, athletic fields and recreation areas.
“We want to thank the community for helping us understand the property out there in a way that I don’t think any of us on the board understood six months ago,” school board member Jim Cooper said. “We do have an obligation to look forward and try to secure the resources we need to educate a growing community if we’re going to grow, but I appreciate the community input.”
