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School designed with 920-seat auditorium
By Jim Cornelius

Architects are designing the new Sisters High School around a 920-seat auditorium.

That's a big auditorium for a school planned for 700 students, but board member Glen Lasken believes the large size will benefit both students and the community.

"I felt we needed to give the architects as clear a direction as possible," said Lasken.

Lasken crafted a motion to set the auditorium size at 900 seats when the board decided on a $21 million budget for the school project on November 2. The motion passed 3-2 with Steve Keeton and Heather Wester opposed.

There are tradeoffs. Since architects had to reduce square footage to come in under budget, restrictions on auditorium size required cuts in other areas. According to school superintendent Steve Swisher, the commons area was one area that had to be trimmed. It will be able to serve 330 to 340 students instead of the original 400.

But Lasken said he is comfortable with that kind of tradeoff.

"I personally represented to the voters that... we were going to build a nice auditorium that would be at least a larger and nicer auditorium than the cafetorium than we're using," he said. "I think that building a 700-seat auditorium would be a step backward."

Current school usage of the auditorium falls well under 700 seats, according to figures provided at The Nugget's request by band director Jody Henderson.

"We usually do combined band and choir concerts, so there's a large number of students involved," Henderson said.

If each student drew two or three people as audience members, Henderson indicated, the seated audience would be up to about 360 people -- including performers seated in the audience while not performing on-stage.

Last week, the student body assembled for an Arts Week band/choir performance. The cafetorium seated 400.

Henderson emphasized the importance of such assemblies.

"It's a very valuable thing to be able to sit our whole student body down together (for a performance)," the band director said. "You could have heard a pin drop. That's a real powerful thing and it says a lot about our school and about our community."

Lasken believes a 900-seat auditorium would enhance that experience, allowing students from all three Sisters schools to attend such an event.

"To the extent that we can pull all these schools together for events, I think it helps all levels of kids," Lasken said.

Lasken acknowledges that there will be many events where the auditorium is only one-third full. Other events he expects to pack the facility. He hopes that those events will produce revenue for the school district through facility rentals.

The Sisters Act, Sisters Rotary's Magical Voices of Christmas and, of course, Sisters Starry Nights, have filled the current cafetorium facility to overflowing. Lasken expects such events -- and others -- to use a new 900-seat auditorium.

"I think the auditorium will be a money-maker for the school district, frankly," he said.

However, Lasken acknowledged that maintenance costs and usage fees might be a factor in community use of the facility, and those costs and fees are not yet known. He acknowledged that some potential users such as the Sisters Folk Festival and High Mountains Jazz at Sisters are reluctant to use the school as a venue because it is not centrally located and the events can't serve alcohol on school property.

But he believes many others will take advantage of the venue.

"I'm thinking that there will be uses that we haven't even thought of yet," he said. "There's an element of, 'if you make it, they will come.'"

Henderson told The Nugget that he had made no recommendation to the board regarding the size of the auditorium and he declined to offer an opinion.

He did, however, express the hope that the discussions about the auditorium will focus more on quality than merely the number of seats.

"I hope we don't just think about the size of an auditorium, but also pay attention to the quality of the acoustics," he said.

Natural acoustics may pose a challenge for a larger room, but Lasken is confident that the school's designers will produce a good acoustic environment. He said the board visited many schools and got ideas for construction materials for the auditorium.

He said he does not believe there will be any significant trade-off in sound quality to gain the extra seats.

The cost of the auditorium has not been determined. However, board members acknowledge that the auditorium is some of the costliest square footage in the school and going from 700 to 920 seats could raise costs significantly.

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