Community Education Health & Wellness
School district leases portion of portable at Discovery Elementary for use as senior center
The Peninsula School District will lease half of a portable at Discovery Elementary School for use as a senior center.
The school board voted 4-1 on July 14 to approve a lease agreement allowing Harbor Senior Connections to use the space in exchange for $50 per month in rent.
Discussion of the lease agreement consumed a substantial amount of time at the board meeting — about 90 minutes of a meeting that lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
Some parents expressed security concerns about bringing people on to the Discovery campus during school hours. Representatives of the school’s Volunteer Parent Organization wondered why the district prioritized providing space for seniors, when their group also needs a home.
School district leaders said the portable will be fenced off, so visitors won’t have access to areas where students study and play. Senior center visitors also will undergo background checks.
Peninsula School District will lease half of this portable at Discovery Elementary School to Olympic Civic Services for use a senior center. Photo by Vince Dice
Harbor Senior Connections
The facility at Discovery will operate under the auspices of Harbor Senior Connections, a program supported by Olympic Civic Services.
Olympic Civic Services is a nonprofit that supports seniors, veterans and youth. Gary Parker and Joe Hillyer formed OCS in 2023 to back causes pertaining to those groups.
It will provide space for things like lecture series, games, classes, connecting seniors with resources, and socialization.
“We were really approached by a group of people that wanted to meet together and have conversations together ... They just wanted to have a place to have coffee together, maybe have some bingo and just have a place,” PSD Superintendent Krestin Bahr said at the meeting.
The lease runs through Aug. 31, 2027. Both parties can cancel it with 45 days’ notice.
Why $50/month
During public comment at the July 14 school board meeting, some community members asked whether $50 a month is an appropriate rental fee.
School District Chief Financial Officer Ashley Murphy explained that Olympic Civic Services is renting only half of a portable that is already used by another program. The rest of the building hosts Child Find, a program that identifies and screens students who may require special education services.
Since half the portable is already being used, opening up the other half won’t substantially increase the district’s utilities costs. And because Harbor Senior Connections will operate when the campus is already in use, the district doesn’t need to pay overtime for additional janitorial services, as it would to open a building on a Sunday, for instance.
“The custodians are always in that building every day because Child Find is in that building every day,” Murphy said at the board meeting. Paying overtime for custodians drives up the cost for renting school facilities on weekends.
The school is not using the portable as a classroom space because elementary enrollment is down in the area Discovery serves. The district picked the Child Find portable because it is easy to restrict access to student areas and because Discovery typically has plenty of parking. It’s also easily accessible by transit.
Removing unused portables is actually more expensive than finding uses for them, Murphy said.
Bahr said the campus includes other under-used portables, and the district would “welcome having further conversations about having other spaces for people to use,” including the Volunteer Parent Organization.
Need for a senior center
Seniors have struggled to find space in Gig Harbor since 2019, and the district is in some ways responsible.
From 2010 to 2019, seniors gathered at the former Boys & Girls Club building on Skansie Drive. But the school district bought that property to build the new Pioneer Elementary there.
Harbor Senior Connections is separate from another senior center operated by the Greater Gig Harbor Foundation. The foundation’s senior center meets in temporary space Peninsula Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall on 38th Avenue.
The foundation plans to build a nearly 6,000-square-foot permanent senior center on more than 13 acres at the intersection of Point Fosdick Drive and 38th Street. But construction won’t begin until 2028 at the earliest.