A long range planning process meant to generate a 10-year plan for D21 facilities netted a 15-year plan instead, one that calls for a new high school first, followed by replacing the three elementaries, starting with Colonel Wright.
After Colonel Wright came Dry Hollow Elementary, and finally, Chenowith Elementary.
Facilitator and architect Richard Higgins had to often remind the small group that met Dec. 10 that their task wasn’t figuring out how to pay for it, but just what it wanted to get done, in what order, and the cost.
Those costs will be brought back to the next long range planning meeting in January.
The group ranked the replacement of the schools based both on how tough a shape the facilities were in, and how poorly they met educational needs. Both sets of data points were generated in the long range planning process, and it showed that the schools in the worst shape also scored the lowest in terms of learning environment. Higgins said that was no coincidence, but a direct correlation.
The new plan is similar to the $235 million bond that voters soundly defeated last year, in that it would replace all four schools, but the failed bond called for just one election approving 50 years worth of bonds, and didn’t specify the order in which the elementaries would be replaced.
D21 Superintendent Candy Armstrong said this latest plan calls for more elections—one for each school—and each election will have more details on each facility as it is put before voters.
“It’s interesting there’s a dozen of us making this decision in here for a town of 10,000 people,” said parent Joel Vaught. “There’s a lot more people than us with skin in this game.”
He said, “So many parents I wish were involved in this process…A real small group of people making a real large decision. I’ve never been a part of something like this and it feels heavy and daunting.”
Armstrong said the new plan closely mirrors what the public wanted after the last election.
High school teacher Phil Brady was part of a group backing the last bond. He said after its failure “we heard loud and clear” what the public wanted, and their thoughts were presented here.
The long range planning process followed a state formula that required teams to evaluate the condition of each school and what it would cost to repair or replace it. The cost figures are updated yearly. If repair costs exceed 30 percent of replacement costs, that is seen industry-wide in construction as the point at which buildings merit replacement.
Nearly all of the buildings are at or above that 30 percent threshold. The high school is 36 percent, Colonel Wright is 31, Chenowith is 26 percent and Dry Hollow is 28 percent. A hospital, for example, would never let its buildings get beyond the 10 percent mark, Higgins said.
The state is requiring all school districts to do the long range plans, so the Legislature can get a sense of how much money is needed to repair schools. The goal is to have the state contribute toward facilities costs. Now, those costs fall almost entirely on local districts, which must pass bonds to build schools.
By doing the plan, the school district becomes eligible to apply for $4 million in state funding for new facilities.
In Washington state, the Legislature pays for up to 60 percent of school construction.
Higgins said his company, BLRB Architects, just opened bids on a new school in Woodburn and the cost per square foot was $370, which he said was a sign that the hot construction market was cooling slightly.
The high school and all three elementaries are undersized and rely on either portable classrooms when it comes to the elementaries, or other campuses in the case of the high school, to house all their programs.
The middle school is the newest building, but reached capacity long before anticipated because it was built to only serve the former District 12. With consolidation with former District 9, it reached capacity essentially as soon as it opened. The former D12 had about 2/3 of the population of the district.
The group at the meeting, which was mostly district staff and school board members with just two citizens, ruled out options that would have repaired the elementaries in the 10-year period.
Board Chair John Nelson asked, in terms of doing repairs to the elementaries, “how long can we get away with that?”
Higgins said, “you can go as long as this community wants to.”
He said teachers are very adaptable, but he noted there is considerable research on how the learning environment—which includes heating and cooling—affects both learning and teaching.
He said everything has a useful life and will eventually fail. “The learning environment is going to continue to decline.”
Someone asked what the district’s bonding capacity was, and D21 Chief Financial Officer Randy Anderson said, “We’ve got plenty of bonding capacity. We don’t have a will.”
The group discussed the failure of last year’s $235 million bond. Board member Dawn Rasmussen said she heard the cost, at $2.99 per $1,000 of assessed property valuation, was too steep.
Nelson said he heard the 50-year bonding authority term was too long.
Brady said, “If we would come back and say we’re taking one bite at a time, they would be supportive of that.”
Rasmussen said one refrain she’d heard was that, as great as the maintenance team is at the district, the work is not enough to keep up.
While the cost of repairing schools was evaluated, Brady said, “the business community would be very upset” with that option because it wouldn’t change the look of the schools.
The idea of building at the former Chenowith Middle School site was tempting to some, but Higgins said the site was steep, had poor bus access, and was fully in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, all significant challenges.
Vaught said if the community wanted to attract new businesses, a new high school was the place to put money, because it shows the community wants to get kids ready for college or careers.
Armstrong said the failed bond started with the high school, but didn’t land anywhere specifically in terms of which order the elementaries would be replaced.
She said repairing elementaries or the high school was “putting millions of dollars into buildings that are past their useful life.”
And things could go wrong, as it did at the beginning of the school year when the high school needed to put people on round the clock fire watch because the fire alarm system failed at the high school. It was repaired, but would have cost $300,000 to replace. That was for one obsolete system at one school, she said.
The attendees talked about the idea of going to voters every five years to build a new school.
Armstrong said, “the community wants that.”
Rasmussen said the district needs to “face the cold hard facts” of whether replacement needs “are even fundable in this community.”
She said she did not vote for the bond, although she could’ve afforded the $1,500-per-year price tag she would have received, but said many residents cannot afford it, and as landlords raised rent to absorb the increase in taxes, people would be made homeless.
Brady said if the community saw a new school in place, they would be motivated to approve more.
Higgins said Gresham was planning a new bond for that very reason.
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