EMMETT — Bob Hyde likes to joke that Emmett High graduates have a peculiar posture.

Years of walking along the edge of classrooms with curved walls, inside one of the school’s unique dome structures, leaves students hunched to the side to avoid bumping their heads, the assistant superintendent said during a tour of the school on Monday night.

“It was built for a wave of the future,” Hyde said.

Four decades later, many community members wish they had a normal high school.

“Personally, I would like to see a new school built,” parent Mallory Mason told EdNews. “I think that it’s time.”

School board chairman Mike Garner said some residents have told him they won’t vote for another bond if it means keeping the domes.

“I believe the feeling is that the community largely is not in favor of the domes,” Garner said.

Emmet High is unique. Built in 1988, the school is made up of five windowless, monolithic domes constructed with reinforced concrete, steel and masonry. The quirky school is now in need of immediate repairs. The dome has minor cracks throughout. Rebar protrudes through the shell. Moisture seeps through. Many of the internal parts are nearing end of their life. It doesn’t comply with code and lacks modern safety features.

Dozens of community members showed up to a public forum on Monday night to hear from a panel of 10 engineering experts from different fields that the district hired to examine the domes’ structural integrity and internal components, including mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

Using visual inspections, X-rays and radar scans, the team of experts concluded that the aging domes do not pose a threat to safety but have lots of wear and tear that needs to be addressed.

The team put together a conceptual estimate of needed repairs, totaling $24 million.

With that new information, residents are better informed about the options facing the community. Should the district put more money into the domes, or build a new school?

Trustee Adam Buck told the dozens of residents gathered in the atrium on Monday that the school board can’t make any decisions unless voters pass a bond.

“At this point, unless this community decides that they want a new high school, there’s nothing a trustee can do,” Buck said.

The domes, he said, might be limiting the town’s growth. Some folks who want to move to Emmett, a sleepy town of 9,000 residents about 25 miles northwest of Boise, turn around when they see the domes and move to Star.

“They would love to come out, but they don’t because of our education system — not because of our system but because of this,” Buck said, gesturing upward to the dome.

Under the domes

After the meeting, Hyde led EdNews on a tour of the two main domes. Classrooms are located in Dome A and the gymnasium is located in Dome B. These two main domes are connected through a covered walkway. Three smaller domes house technical workshops and classrooms.

During the tour, Hyde pointed out cracks throughout the inner membrane of the dome. Engineers have attached small devices that monitor the cracks.

“You can see they painted this over the summer, but they’re starting to break back up,” Hyde said as he pointed to a crack in a classroom wall.

The cracks are worse in a utility closet on the first floor, where an electrical box juts into the wall.

“You’ll see one of the major cracks — look at that,” Hyde said as he led a few residents into the closet.

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Doors throughout the school have been shaved down over time to allow them to close properly. They seemed to have sagged over time. Judsen Williams, a structural engineer for KPFF, said some of the doors are original and the jambs need to be replaced.

As Hyde led the tour to the third floor, the curvature of the classroom walls became more pronounced. The third floor has lots of wasted space at the edge of the rooms. Emmett High is 103,575 square feet, of which 13,000 is unusable.

The school was built before Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. 

The domes lack accessible clearances and compliant bathroom stalls. The low ceilings pose headroom issues. Bringing the bathrooms into compliance would cost about $1.3 million.

“Sometimes it’s not worth (it to) keep putting money into a facility,” said Josh Hoffer, a senior project manager for Hummel Architects.

From the outside

Superintendent Craig Woods said the district’s biggest concern is the outer envelope of the domes.

The exterior shows a patchwork of repairs over the years. Holes have been patched to stop moisture from seeping into the walls.

“We were concerned that there was a lot of moisture behind that,” Woods told EdNews. “That maybe was causing the building to be so heavy that it was causing some of the flexing that we see in the facilities.”

Teenagers being teenagers, Hyde said some students have used pencils to poke holes in the outer membrane. Others have tried to climb the domes using spiked cleats. Staff have found shuriken, or Chinese throwing stars, in the dome.

 “We predict there’s probably over 10,000 holes in it,” Hyde said.

After hearing the presentation and joining the school tour, Mason said she has confidence in the school’s staff. But the Emmett resident and mother of kids who will eventually attend the high school is concerned about the safety and functionality of the domes.

She said taxpayer money would be better spent building a new facility instead of repairing the domes.

“There are so many repairs that need to be done to get this school up to date for it to become safe, for it to be efficient,” Mason said. “And it just kind of kicks the can down the road. We’ll have the same problems reoccurring that we’ll have to address again.”

Before the public forum on Monday night, students had their first day of school.

Sophomore Knox Robinson was hanging out with some friends outside the main dome. He told EdNews it’s kind of weird going to a school without windows, and it can be a bit difficult getting around a desk at the edge of classrooms. But overall, he likes the school.

“It’s fun,” Robinson said. “I mean, definitely the best school experience I’ve had.”