Time takes a toll: A closer look at The Dalles High School's disrepair

Built nearly 50 years prior to the 1990 passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the building was constructed with little to no regard for wheelchair-bound or otherwise physically disabled students or faculty. Only one elevator provides those who need it with access to the building’s second story, and the only ground level access to it is through an exterior entrance. This means anyone requiring the elevator would have to exit the building to utilize it during the allotted five-minute passing period between classes.

“If students have to get from say, a classroom on the far west side to up above, they would have come all the way out back and around, up the wheelchair ramp and through the elevator to get to their class,” said Stephanie Bowen, District 21 communications director. “I hear a lot anecdotally that if any students have any sort of need or accommodation, even pretty basic stuff, they rely a lot on each other for help just opening doors and getting around and carrying books up and down to classrooms. So, it really becomes more than just the student affected. It’s usually their whole friend groups that are then affected because they’re essentially caregivers for their friend.”

The only wheelchair ramp students and staff can utilize to enter the building is located at the east entrance. Any students or faculty needing to reach a ground level classroom in the hallway of the main building (colloquially known as Senior Hall) or the main office would be required to either go all the way through the auditorium, or go outside and halfway across campus to go through an external entrance near the building’s west wing and double back. There are spaces on campus, including the Kurtz gym and the band room, that are completely wheelchair inaccessible, and should there be wheelchair-bound students taking classes located in those spaces, school administration would need to move those classes to a location that is accessible to everyone.

“Which, you can imagine, is not an easy thing to do to just pick up and completely move a classroom,” Bowen said.

According to TDHS Principal Kurt Evans, during a year while he was vice principal, the high school received an audit from the Office of Civil Rights (ORC), and the auditor shared with him they would need to report their findings on a federal level.

“Their comment to me was she’d never seen anything this bad from a standpoint of accessibility, and she views the whole state,” Evans said. “There is nothing that is even remotely compliant with modern ADA accessibility.”

Infrastructure-wise, there are many areas in which the building requires major repairs and upgrades. Visible water damage can be seen in the form of crumbling ceiling tiles in classrooms, and according to Evans, damage had gotten so bad in the library that flooring had to be replaced due to rot, and a roof replacement alone would be a seven-figure project.

“Because the sort of proverbial can has been kicked down the road for so many years, and without any kind of revenue stream you’re limited to the state school fund, and that doesn’t really go beyond paying your staff and doing general upkeep,” Evans said.

“It’s really an infrastructure issue,” Bowen said.

Other infrastructure concerns include the auditorium. A location in which students are typically gathered for school-wide assemblies, concerts and plays, the auditorium is also often used as a community resource for non-school related events, meetings and presentations. According to Evans, a few years prior, support beams had to be placed underneath the flooring as it had begun to cave in. “They’re concerned about having 800 students in here and it collapsing, because it’s starting to,” Evans said.

“We do have some hazardous material maintenance plans that our maintenance team have to review,” said Bowen when asked whether potential exposure to hazardous materials is a concern with damages to such an old building taking place. “Obviously anytime there’s construction or major renovations, those are things that we have to come in and look at, but things like lead or what other contaminants may be in the area, yes, those would be a concern.”

One of the most glaring infrastructure issues can be noticed as soon as you enter the building. With the only form of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system in the building being in the west wing, in the main building, temperatures outside can easily reflect inside the building.

“We get 90 plus degree days in the fall and in the late spring, and that’s what the temperature is upstairs in our math and our science rooms,” Evans said. Some classrooms have window air conditioning units to attempt to keep the heat at bay, but according to Evans, the building’s electrical system would not have the capacity to install additional units without an electrical upgrade. “It’s just not feasible,” he said.

“You may remember a few years ago, the summer was really hot, we actually had the fire door trigger because it was so hot,” Bowen said. “You can imagine when the temperatures get up to 101, 110, how hot it is.

“We do follow heat index guidelines, so we would potentially have to cancel school,” Bowen said.

Which was the case in 2015. As previously reported by The Dalles Chronicle on June 9, 2015, all North Wasco County schools were released early that day due to extreme heat.

With the infrastructure as is, concerns regarding the building’s age aren’t only due to its current condition, but also offered safety in a dangerous situation. Many doors in the building require different keys, which can add to response times in the event of a dangerous or life-threatening situation taking place in the school. “If there were an event and an administrator or an emergency responder had to key-in or get into a room to get access, it’s very hard to identify which key goes to which room,” Bowen said.

While the building hasn’t yet reached capacity for students, according to Evans, the high school has reached its capacity for teachers, and currently utilizes Columbia Gorge Community College for at least one class. “We can’t fit any more teachers here. If I had another teacher, they would have to share the classroom. There’s no more teaching spaces,” Evans said.

This is credited to the fact that there are multiple rooms in the high school that are considered to be too small to be classrooms and have to be utilized as office space.

“There’s a lot of spaces like that, that are in this building that make it very, very inefficient standpoint of where we are.”

Another example of an inefficient space on campus is the school’s cafeteria, also known as “The chat and chew.” An outbuilding of the school, according to Bowen it was originally constructed as the school’s machine engine shop before being converted to serve food, and can currently only serve roughly 12% of the student population.

“For our roughly 850 students, we have six tables in our cafeteria,” Bowen said.

“The problem with this with this setup, is you create a very, very segregated lunch,” Evans said. “Because it’s so unattractive to stay here and eat, those that have some means get in a car leave. Those with a little bit of means maybe will walk to a store. For those that are on free reduced [lunch] and rely on this school for meals, they stay. And so it really creates a an unhealthy division of the student body.”

In an attempt to increase serving capacity, the district purchased a food truck this last year to be available to serve lunch to students for the next school year, along with the construction of a gazebo to offer more seating options, as students who stay for lunch typically find places throughout campus to eat. “Almost all of the teachers just have their doors open at lunchtime, and kids gather in their classrooms, and just … spend their lunch period in a classroom.” Evans said, “[I] just appreciate the teachers here greatly.”

Students who leave campus for lunch must be able to travel, obtain and eat their food and then return to campus within a 30 minute lunch period. With no designated student parking area, many have to utilize and the residential streets around campus to park. “You see a lot of tardiness after lunch and coming back and cutting into the academic component as well,” Bowen said.

With the number of glaring deficiencies within both the building’s infrastructure and day to day programing and operations, and the required amount of repairs and overall updates needed to keep the building running as an educational facility, a 30-year bond measure has been put forth by the school district for the total amount of $140 million dollars to replace TDHS with a new building located on the Wahtonka campus. The bond was approved by the North Wasco County School District board of directors to be submitted for the November 2023 ballot. As previously reported by Columbia Gorge News, the bond package would not only allow for a modern, completely ADA compliant building, but would also allow upgrades to the athletic facilities and fields and increase school capacity.

According to the NWCSD website, if passed it would cost the average homeowner approximately $2.73 per $1,000 of assessed property value. This is 39 cents less than the initially calculated $3.12, when the bond was approved to appear on the ballot.

“After the board approved moving forward with the bond, the district met with Piper Sandler & Co. to conduct an updated General Obligation Bonds Levy Rate Analysis,” said Bowen in an email to Columbia Gorge News. “This analysis is based on current market trends including bonding rates, property values, and other economic factors. We are happy to report that the updated analysis lowered the estimated cost to $2.73 per $1,000 of assessed property value.”

When it comes to the community, a new building can benefit more than students, staff and parents. The TDHS “bond basics” page notes that communities with good schools can affect property values, draw more skilled professionals — such as physicians — to the area, and help contribute to the local economy by encouraging people to stay and therefore invest in the area, and attract businesses. This is all while shaping the future workforce.

“It’s what you say about the importance of your kids and your education, and what do you value in your community,” Evans said. “I’ve been at this for 23 years now, and I’ve been all over the state and other states and seeing their facilities and their high schools, and you just never see anything in this disrepair.”

“During our polling, one of the things I was most shocked about was the perception of our community and how many people indicated that they felt that our school facilities were in excellent condition,” Bowen said. “And to me, that broke my heart, because that just shows how out of touch that some of these folks are, that they’re just driving by that they haven’t seen what our students and our staff are living with every day.”

Whether the bond measure does or does not get passed this November, the question now being asked is just how much longer can the current TDHS building operate as a school in its current condition?

“The thing that I kind of worry about, at some point with this building is, just more or less, how long can we even occupy it?” Evans said, “At some point, if your house is in disrepair, you say, ‘Okay, we can’t live here anymore. It’s falling apart.’”

To learn more about the school bond measure, go to the NWCSD website and click the “Bond Planning” link under the “About us” tab.