Welches student Tony Green, 14, about to begin his freshman year at Sandy
High School, got a chance to take a quick look through the brand new building
where he’ll study this fall thanks to his involvement with the school’s football
team. He came away impressed.

“It looks like a college instead of a high school,” Green said.

Green and his freshman Mountain counterparts will be members of the class
of 2016, the first to spend all four years in the new Sandy High School and
not experience education in the old building. Their time will likely be very
different from those students who learned in the outdated facility, including, in
some cases, their parents.

Green’s mother, Heather Kelner, graduated in 1998 and remembers having to
sit on the classroom floor or on the heating register because there were not
enough desks for all the students.

“It was kind of defeating right off the bat,” said Kelner, who described the
building as “run down” and having an “old atmosphere.” “I didn’t feel like we
were a big priority for this podunk little school.”

The new building runs contrary to that description, as Green noted how he
and his friends are amazed at its size and the aesthetic elements that give it
some eye appeal.

“It was really nice,” Green said. “Right as you walk in there’s a really big
mural of Mount Hood.”

Harrison McKnight, a classmate of Green’s, and his mother, Karen, got a tour
of the new building in mid-August and also came away very impressed. They
marveled at the numerous computer labs, the TV studio, a pottery room with
two rows of kilns and a commons area that resembles a restaurant setting.

“And the library looks like a Barnes and Noble,” noted Karen, who graduated
from the old school in 1989. “They just really thought of everything.”

Karen described the high school when she attended as being in “rough shape”
and “definitely had some issues,” but she also credited the teachers as pulling
through to give her a great education. She noted that the new building offers
more room for the teachers to prepare for their classroom lessons.

“I think that’s important for our teachers, have time and quiet space,” she
said.

And thanks to the tour, Harrison has already decided to switch up his electives
in order to include a class in the school’s new auto shop.

“After seeing the shop, it’s incredible, it’s insane,” said Harrison, 14. “(The
school is) kind of fancier than I imagined. It’s just kind of unreal with most of
the details in the building.”

Karen, who participated in volleyball, leadership and cheerleading during her
high school years, added that there are some things she will miss about the
old building: memories. In particular she noted the gym, where she cheered
the boy’s basketball team on a successful season in 1988.

“A lot of things happened there,” she said.

Both Karen and Kelner agreed that the new theater will be a vast
improvement over the one at the old building though, where productions and
concerts were mounted in a room also used as the school cafeteria and as
another gymnasium.

“(Students) worked so hard on productions and got stuck in commons area,”
Kelner said. “It was just kind of a bummer.”

In addition to the excitement over the new building is just a little sense of
worry. Harrison noticed the lockers in the new school are bigger than the ones
in the old school, but he hopes there are enough for all the students (district
communications director Julia Monteith noted students will need to share
lockers, but they are full-sized and not half-lockers like at the old school), and
estimated it would take up to three weeks to get a full memorization of the
building.

But despite these worries, as parents and former graduates of Sandy High
School (if not the new building), both Kelner and Karen McKnight see the new
school as a great benefit to their children and the community.

“I think we should all be so proud to have a building like this in Sandy,” Karen
said. “I know I am.”

“It’s validating from the community that our students are worth a tax raise,”
added Kelner. “Our students are worth giving them something better than
what we had at their age.”