Who says a dollar doesn’t buy anything anymore?
The Bainbridge Island Child Care Centers has donated its Big Kids building on the Bainbridge Island School District’s property next to Ordway Elementary School.
Shelley Long, executive director of the child care center, said the building was transferred to Bainbridge Youth Services for $1.
“We are thrilled to be able to pass the building on to another nonprofit,” said James Shepard, board president for the Bainbridge Island Child Care Centers.
“We were able to purchase the former Montessori property on High School Road for below market value and we feel our donation is a good way to pay that generosity forward,” he explained.
The child care center had housed its Big Kids program in the building for nearly 30 years. It built the iconic “little red schoolhouse” on the property, leasing the land from the Bainbridge Island School District.
Officials with the nonprofit noted the Kids Club program had been in the portables next door until 2013 when the school district needed the space for administrative offices.
Additionally, because the school district anticipated it would require the portion of the Ordway campus where the Big Kids building is located as part of its master plan, district officials did not renew the land lease for the property that’s been home to the Big Kids building.
Officials said the school district has worked for the past six years to keep the Kids’ Club program on district property and granted short-term lease extensions for the Big Kids building.
“Tamela Van Winkle and the rest of BISD’s facilities team cared enough about our partnership to serve district families that they continued to carve out a spot for our programs,” Shepard said. “The district’s flexibility and generosity gave us the time we needed to explore all our options. But it was getting pretty disheartening, and we were starting to worry that we wouldn’t catch a break.”
In 2016 the luckiest of breaks came in the form of an offer from Montessori Country School. The school was looking to sell its 2.5-acre property on High School Road in order to consolidate its programs at its campus near Battle Point Park.
“We were told that, rather than get top dollar for the property, MCS’s board wanted to sell it at an affordable price to a fellow educational nonprofit,” Shepard recalled. “We were so grateful that our trustees pledged to figure out a way to pay it forward to another local nonprofit someday.”
The nonprofit purchased the former Montessori site and launched the “Little Red Schoolhouse Campaign” to improve the existing building, bring in a new portable building, and build a plaza and playground.
The work at the new site is continuing, as is the fundraising for the project. The hope is to move students into the new campus in May.
