When the Evergreen State College pool closes next month, the North Thurston Public Schools will have the burden of having the only pools in Thurston County that can accommodate high school swim teams.
With the City of Lacey and other community groups also relying on the school district’s three pools for their own programs, city staff are struggling to make a plan that can meet everyone’s aquatic needs.
“It would have an impact on our programs,” said City of Lacey Recreation Manager Sue Falash said of the Evergreen pool closure during a joint work session between North Thurston Public Schools Board of Directors and the Lacey City Council on Tuesday, May 12.
Evergreen State College announced its intention to close its 11-lane pool in March, citing expensive mandatory infrastructure upgrades and a need to cut operating costs due to a projected multi-million-dollar budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year.
The pool is currently utilized by four Olympia School District swim teams and two Tumwater School District swim teams — roughly 200 student athletes in total — for their home swim meets and practices during the fall and winter seasons.
The only school district in Thurston County that doesn’t use the Evergreen pool is North Thurston Public Schools, which has pools at each of its three high schools — North Thurston, River Ridge and Timberline.
The Timberline High School Pool and the River Ridge High School Pool each have six lanes. The North Thurston High School Pool has five.
In addition to accommodating North Thurston Public Schools’ six swim teams, the three high school pools are also used by the City of Lacey and community partners via a joint use agreement between the city and the district that’s been in place since 1972.
As part of that joint use agreement, North Thurston Public Schools gets top priority for use of the pools for their swim teams, and the City of Lacey manages the pools’ schedules after that.
Programs that the City of Lacey runs utilizing the North Thurston Public Schools’ pools include swim lessons, aquatic fitness classes and family open swim sessions.
“The city would not be able to provide these programs and services that we are able to without this longstanding agreement,” said Parks, Culture and Recreation Director Jen Burbidge.
The City of Lacey primarily runs its recreational aquatic programs in the summer, when there’s no overlap with North Thurston Public Schools’ swim teams.
The city also facilitates pool rentals throughout the year to community partners for a variety of uses. The Thurston Olympians Swim Club hosts regular practices and meets, The Lacey Fire Department and Olympia Fire Department and some Boy Scout troops have used the pools for training exercises, the City of Olympia and the City of Tumwater use the pools for their summer day camps, and one group regularly hosts a Friday night underwater hockey club.
As of the 2025-2026 school year, North Thurston Public Schools was the only school district with swim teams using the district’s pools.
The Tumwater School District has historically used North Thurston Public Schools’ pools, but moved to Evergreen’s pool last year due to scheduling difficulties.
“We were having a hard time getting the schedule that they had to have for their coach that they had at that time. We just couldn't meet their needs because of the North Thurston school district's teams,” Falash said.
The Olympia School District’s swim teams have been using Evergreen’s pool since their start in the '70s.
With the Evergreen pool set to close at the end of the districts’ current contracts in June, the Tumwater and Olympia high schools have reached out to the City of Lacey about possibly moving to North Thurston Public Schools’ pools next year.
“We’ve had some preliminary conversations. Nothing is set,” Falash said Tuesday.
If both Olympia and Tumwater school districts’ swim teams do move to North Thurston’s pools, the City of Lacey would need to cut back the swim lessons and water aerobics programs that it offers during the school year to accommodate them, especially during the fall.
The city anticipates that the biggest impact to its recreation programs would be from September to November, during the girls’ swim season. The impact during the boys’ season from November to February would be “not as big,” because the Tumwater School District doesn’t have boys’ swim teams, Falash said.
“But there would still be an impact. Plus, because they’d be in there, so it’ll be harder to get any other outside groups in,” she said.
The city is currently working with the Thurston Olympians Swim Club to make sure their needs are still met, and has a meeting scheduled with North Thurston’s athletic directors to see what their swim teams’ schedules will look like next year, and whether it’s even possible to accommodate the Olympia and Tumwater swim teams.
“Everything is just preliminary, but we’re trying to see if there’s a way that we can help manage that so they (Olympia and Tumwater) don’t lose their programs in the community as well,” Falash said.
Accommodating all of the local high school swim teams could mean blocking in time between practices so each team has time to fully clear out before the next team comes in, or having some teams splitting a pool to practice together.
The hardest part of the planning process will likely be coordinating meet schedules, Falash said.
North Thurston Public Schools has also raised the concern about the added wear-and-tear on its pool facilities that bringing in more swim teams would bring.
“We’ll know more once we meet with the school district and really talk about how this could work, if it would or wouldn’t, just how can we try to facilitate it for these folks, for these kids,” Falash said.
While Evergreen State College is planning to close its pool in June, college leaders said they won’t make long-term decisions about the pool for at least another year, and that re-opening the facility is on the table.
There is an ongoing community effort to keep the Evergreen State College pool open, with advocates under the banner “Save the Evergreen State College Pool” appealing to the college board of trustees, local governments and state legislators.
There have been loose talks amongst Thurston County leaders in recent years about building a new regional aquatic center to service the area’s aquatic needs, but that proposal has made little progress since 2023.
