The school district is building a new Bethel High School. It is a 300,000 sq. ft. building, scheduled to come online for the 2026-27 school year. The space will house 2,000 students.

The current Bethel High School, although remodeled twice, was the first and only high school in the district when it was originally formed by superintent Ruth Bethel’s district reorganizations in 1949. Many smaller one school districts were combined into our present-day school districts. Bethel was comprised of Spanaway, Elk Plain, Roy, Kapowsin, and Rocky Ridge. Clover Creek was added later.

As a last chance to walk the halls of the first Bethel High School, the Spanaway Community Association is organizing a reunion of all the classes from the school. In fact, all the staff, sport icons and teachers too. Everyone who was part of the operation of the school is welcome.

The event will be held at Art Crate Field on July 12, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Classes from the years 1952 to present have been invited to set up a booth on Art Crate field with memorabilia from their years at the school, take donations for future class reunions, and sign up their classmates with current contact information for those reunions.

Organizer Marianne Lincoln, a former school board member, has been involved in planning many class reunions and spearheaded the idea. Through various websites and social media groups for Bethel alumni, she and the reunion committee have contacted many classes to participate. The school district agreed to make the field available for the event.

The website for the event is at https://bhs-reunion.com/. There, you can sign up your class booth or see who has signed up to help plan the space. You can sign up to be a food truck, or contact the organizers to help out with parking, setup or teardown.

Bob Niehl has rallied the Bethel School District Athletic Hall of Fame to be there and explain how former athletes from the district can be nominated for their Hall of Fame. His father, Ed Niehl, is over 100 and still with us. The gymnasium at the high school is named after him as he was the district sports director for many years. Hopefully he will be able to make a guest appearance.

Fraternal Clubs and organizations like Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary, etc. are encouraged to contact the organizers if they would like to set up a booth and raise money by providing candy, ice cream, water and other items that help them provide local community services and scholarships to our Bethel students.

Local businesses are encouraged to advertise or co-sponsor the event and help defray expenses. The event is free to attend.