Despite concerns from community members, the Sammamish High School woodshop class will not be turning off its table saws anytime soon.

Multiple members of the community appealed to the district to keep the course, including Interlake High School student David Demaree, who spoke in front of the Board of Directors in Juneabout what the class meant to him. Demaree said he believed the end of the woodshop class was due to the district’s increasing focus on STEM program.

“They want to focus more academic stuff with the STEM program going on there, which strikes me as ironic, because woodshop kind of is inherently a technology class,” he said to the school board.

Karen Demaree, the mother of David and another child in the Bellevue School District, called the rumor that the district would be suspending the woodshop program “an unfortunate choice”.

Although the existing Woods Lab will be demolished as a part of the ongoing Sammamish High School renovations, but the Engineering Design Labs that are being built to replace it will also include the tools to support a woodshop class.

“I understand Woods Tech has been a very positive learning experience for many students over time,” said Tom Duenwald in an email to a concerned family. “While the new Engineering Design Labs are significantly different than the woods-focused facility that was created over fifty years ago, they do include several large machines for fabricating with woods, metals and plastics.”

The school is increasing their focus on STEM programs, and will be adding new CTE/STEM course offerings including construction management, robotics, engineering and material sciences courses.

However, the woodshop course will still be a part of the curriculum. One of the new spaces has several large mostly woods-related devices, including a band saw, drill press, belt sander, bench top miter saw, arbor press, planer, table saw and other tools. It also includes smaller equipment that can be used for woods-focused engineering and construction management projects.

“We have also devoted significant time, energy and resources over the past several years toward developing a Problem Based Learning approach toward the curriculum that embraces the type of learning experiences… had in the woods class,” said Duenwald.