(1) In order to be eligible for state funding assistance, a modernization project shall have as its principal purpose one or more of the following:

(a) Bringing a facility into compliance with current building and health codes when so required by state or local health or safety officials;

(b) Changing the grade span grouping by facility by the addition, deletion, or combination thereof of two or more grades within the affected facility;

(c) The reduction of the number of operating school facilities in a district by combining the remaining school facilities through modernization and new capital construction so as to achieve more cost effective and efficient operation in the combined school facility or facilities. In order to be eligible for state funding assistance, such a project shall result in additional space for at least 100 additional pupils and the following enrollment in any combined facility:

(i) Elementary school facility—500 pupils;

(ii) Middle or junior high school facility—700 pupils;

(iii) Senior high school facility—850 pupils:

Provided, That modernization projects in school districts with a high school enrollment of less than 850 pupils need not comply with the enrollment figures set forth above: Provided further, That unless the district demonstrates the existence of unhoused students, state funding assistance for the new construction component of a combined modernization and new construction project shall be limited to the provision of WAC 392-347-040; or

(d) Meeting the educational program of the facility.

(2) School districts shall certify that a proposed modernization project will extend the life of the modernized school facility by at least twenty years.

(3) School districts shall be ineligible for state funding assistance for modernization of any school facility accepted by the school district board of directors prior to January 1, 1993, where the principal purpose of that modernization project is to:

(a) Restore building systems and subsystems that have deteriorated due to deferred maintenance;

(b) Perform piecemeal work on one section or system of a school facility;

(d) Modernize a facility or any section thereof which has received state funding assistance under the authority of this chapter within the previous twenty years;

(e) To modernize a senior high school facility in a district with a senior high school where there is existing space available to serve the students involved or affected in a neighboring senior high school without, in the judgment of the superintendent of public instruction, an undue increase in the cost of transporting the students to and from school, decrease in educational opportunity, or proportional increase in the cost of instruction pursuant to chapter 392-341 WAC.

(4) School facilities accepted by the school district board of directors after January 1, 1993, shall be ineligible for state funding assistance for modernization of the facility or any section thereof where:

(a) The facility was constructed and occupied within the previous thirty years;

(b) The facility received state funding assistance under the authority of this chapter within the previous thirty years.

PDFWAC 392-347-015

Eligibility for state funding assistance.