The Bainbridge High 100 Building has storage problems.

And safety problems. And structural problems.

Actually, it literally has buckets of problems — custodians repeatedly pump standing water out of the electrical room, where it circles ominously around the emergency generator.

But how do these problems affect students?

Do they really need natural daylight, working drinking fountains, triple-pane windows and quiet flooring to learn effectively?

Bainbridge residents who are still wondering can hash out those finer points with neighbors — or Duane Fish. (The BHS principal will be at the Jan. 23 BHS open house to answer questions.)

Despite their best efforts, teachers agree instruction in the 45-year-old structure is difficult, often involves complex, creative workarounds and results in inefficiency and a less-than-ideal student experience.

Band facilities

Chris Thomas directs a robust 100-piece band that has no space to practice.

“Right now, despite organization and purging, our facility is packed to the gills,” he said. “Our band room tops off at 35 student musicians and the tiered floor locks us into one configuration.”

During class, when the band splits into sectionals, it’s almost impossible to find separate listening environments, he said. Theoretically, there are four practice rooms, but, because Thomas has limited storage for the 14 ensembles he leads — four concert bands, two jazz bands, four jazz combos, a percussion ensemble, the marching band, the basketball band, the chamber music program and Winterguard — they all serve dual purposes.

The percussion room is the most accommodating of the bunch; wedged between giant drums, three students with music stands can fit there.

To the left is the music library, or Practice Room 2, stacked wall-to-wall with four-foot-high filing cabinets. A two-foot aisle between them leaves space for two practice stands; students with small instruments can sit on top.

Flags, hula hoops and labeled bins pack Practice Room 3, where one non-claustrophobic student (“maybe,” Thomas said) can eke out scales in peace. And that leaves the fourth room-closet with its capacity for two. Students are dedicated, though, and give up time before school, after school and during their lunches to get their chance to rehearse, Thomas said.

For performances, everybody is relegated to the BHS Commons; the LGI isn’t big enough.

It doesn’t sound like such a bad deal until you watch the wheeling process. It takes almost an hour to transport all the equipment through the parking lot, Thomas said.

Although students are careful, there have been a few casualties; a cymbal, a vibraphone that constantly needs attending, and, in the ‘90s, a baby grand piano rolled into the drainage “vortex,” was knocked off its legs and ruined, Thomas said.

It would also be nice, he added, if the combined classes actually had space to practice together. Instead, joint pieces are performed impromptu.

“The day of the concert, we play the first note a few times and then go for it,” Thomas said.

No room for drama

Karen Polinsky’s list of challenges can be condensed into three categories: poor design, faulty equipment and limited storage.

First, the obvious: The LGI is not acoustically sound and you can’t actually see the stage from every seat in the 278-seat house. There’s no orchestra pit, no green room, no shop to store and create sets — so people frequently trip over them and injure themselves.

Bob MacAllister and Elena Baker did, Polinsky said, “And I believe Barbara Hume did, too.”

As for Polinsky, she’s still new.

The other problem with not having adequate storage is that sets have to be thrown away after every production.

Hume, who now teaches Drama I and II, explains: “We have to build everything right here. Once it’s assembled, you have to disassemble it in order to store the lumber underneath the stadium and then it gets all wet and it’s rotted and you just wasted your budget. So we destroy everything.”

Polinsky is worried about the burning smell that fills the stage every time students switch on the overhead lights. The system is inadequate, she said.

“We can add only one color at a time and, when the lights move, they make a disturbing noise.”

The backstage lighting system is also inadequate.

“We are often stumbling around with flashlights,” Polinsky explained.

While she doesn’t have footlights or lights in the wings to worry about, the sound board’s “spaghetti-like bundle of makeshift wires” certainly keep her on her toes.

This past November, the morning “Romeo and Juliet” was supposed to open, the system died. Fortunately, she noted, school district technicians came to the rescue and fixed it.

One student shared that it’s frustrating that the cables are inaccessible, that they run under the building.

“If they break, we can’t fix them,” she said. “We’re unauthorized to go under the LGI.”

Special education

Bainbridge High offers two types of special education programming in the 100 Building: Learning Strategies and Integrated Learning Classrooms. The former is for students with learning disabilities and health impairments, the latter, the district’s most medically fragile students, who “have primary learning needs in the functional life skills domain.” Both face obstacles in the current facility.

Katie Erickson has 30 Learning Strategies students, most of whom require small group instruction as an accommodation on their Individualized Education Plans.

“A lot of times they need something retaught from the regular classroom or they need a different type of instruction so that the information is more accessible to them,” she explained.

Her large classroom has dividing panels, but she can’t use them because they’re falling apart.

“I don’t trust them to go back,” she said.

Instead, every other day, she spends nearly half of her 110-minute periods configuring an environment suitable for small group instruction — moving rooms, moving students when, otherwise, she could be teaching.

Space issues also affect students on 504 plans. They’re supposed to have quiet testing locations free of distractions. But because there aren’t designated testing areas, Erickson oftentimes has to put them in a classroom where small group instruction is already taking place.

Erickson doesn’t have any handicapped students, but she counts two in the other special ed program, ILC. She laments the lack of accessible restrooms and building entrances for these students, who are supposed to be learning independent living skills.

“The accessibility is just a glaring [issue] to me,” she said. “We really need to have the accessibility correct for the population we’re serving.”

Bond basics

The new BHS 100 building is estimated to cost $30 million, and along with the proposal for a new Blakely Elementary School, will be put before voters in a $81.2 million bond measure Feb. 9.

The bond would also authorize the district to renovate and upgrade other school buildings.

Sixty percent of voters will have to approve the bond for it to pass. If approved, it would increase school taxes by an estimated 36 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value (or $15 per month for the median home of $486,000).

District officials said the bonds are structured so that the total school tax rate would remain roughly constant for the life of the bond, up to 20 years.