The Spokane Guilds' School & Neuromuscular Center is exploring building a much larger facility that would enable it to serve more children and families, says executive director Dick Boysen. The school is badly crowded now, he says.

"It's pretty preliminary. But we're very serious about doing this, and we're exploring all options," says Boysen. "We want to make an excellent choice as to where we're going to build it. We want to make an excellent choice for the community."

Neither a contractor nor an architect has been hired, and a feasibility study needs to be conducted to identify possible funding sources, he says.

The Guilds' School works with children with disabilities, from birth to 3 years old, providing a personalized and comprehensive program of assessment, therapy, education, and support. It serves 200 children and their families, and employs 50 people, Boysen says.

Currently, the school is located in an 18,000-square-foot building at 2118 W. Garland, but Boysen says its board of directors is looking at constructing a 45,000-square-foot building to house the school. He says the school expects such a project would cost $10 million to $15 million.

The school leases its facility now, and the two-acre property it sits on, for $1 per year from Spokane Public Schools, but, Boysen says, "We're just popping at the seams."

The school's board is looking at two options. Under one option, he says, it could continue to lease the property where its current school is located, if it could secure a long-term lease of 40 or 50 years, and build the new school on an unused playing field to the north. It also could purchase the property and build there, he says. When construction was completed there, it could tear down its current facility and use that area for parking, he says. Under the other option, the school would purchase roughly three acres of land near the Riverpoint Campus and construct the new facility there.

"Once we decide on the location, the pace can pick up," Boysen says. The school plans to choose a location within the next six months, he says.

Building at the current site would lower costs for land, reducing the required fundraising, he says. But space is limited on the property, he says, and would limit future expansion, and the school wouldn't be able to accommodate the growing population of children from the Spokane Valley area as easily.

Building near Riverpoint would make the school more centrally located, he says, and the school would be more accessible to Riverpoint students who could work there. Property, however, might be difficult to acquire there, he says.

The current Guilds' School building was constructed in 1967, and always has served as a facility for children with disabilities, he says. It was last renovated in 1993, he says.

The school board wants to have a new facility within the next three years, he says. The primary goals for building a new facility start with serving more children and their families, says Boysen.

Twenty years ago, the school served 90 percent of Spokane's very young children with disabilities, but that has dropped to 40 percent, he says. He says a larger facility could reverse that trend.

The other goals are enhancing professional training in partnership with regional universities, and a new facility would allow for enhanced observation, data collection, and research that Boysen says would enhance services to children and their families.