Timber Ridge Elementary opens on time, Brings many Snoqualmie Students ‘home’ for School

Just 17 months after the official ground breaking, and even though ‘Meet your Teacher’ Day had to be pushed back to the first day of class, SVSD’s newest school welcomed hundreds of elementary students on August 31, 2016.

Timber Ridge Elementary School (TRES), located at the corner of SE Swenson Drive and Snoqualmie Parkway, is approximately 70,000 square feet with 31 classrooms – and has capacity for about 650 students.

Although some exterior work remains to be finished, students and families eagerly entered the building bright and early Wednesday morning.

The $35 million school is very similar to Cascade View Elementary, with a few tweaks based on feedback from CVES staff – like a slightly bigger gymnasium and a covered playground. Each classroom wing also has one additional room, which increased permanent capacity.

The school’s design incorporated dendrochronology, the science of tree ring dating, so one of the final interior finishing touches was a large cross-section of an old growth timber encased in glass. It’s located in the school’s entryway,

TRES the first new school constructed in the growing Snoqualmie Valley since voters passed a $53 million bond in 2003, a bond that funded the construction of Cascade View ES  and Twin Falls MS.

Wednesday morning Snoqualmie Police Officers had two vehicles parked, with lights flashing, at the intersection of Swenson and Snoqualmie Parkway as a reminder to drivers about the new school and added pedestrian traffic the area will now see on a regular basis.

Return to Neighborhood School for Local Families

The opening of TRES marks a big change for many of its students and families: going to school in the city where they reside. For the past six years, students living in the neighborhoods surrounding the school had been bused to Fall City and North Bend where classroom space was available.

Exterior Work to Finish

Crews are still working hard to complete the finishing touches of the school’s exterior while students and staff get familiar with the brand new interior.

The covered play area in the rear of the building isn’t quite finished, but it is expected to be done soon which will allow the new playground equipment, complete with a northwest theme and rubber padding underneath, to get a good ‘working in’ from hundreds of little feet.

As of Wednesday some landscaping work remained, and some exterior touches on the front of the school, but nothing drastic enough to hamper the start of a new school year at the new school.

A Grand Opening event for Timber Ridge Elementary will be held on September 8th.