School Bond: District crafts a solid plan to put before voters this spring

The district’s plan is a solid one and one the board should adopt. This winter, the district took the time to find out the community’s ideas on how best to move ahead with capital improvements, and the proposal reflects that effort at listening.

Rather than proceed with what had long been contemplated — the splashier idea of building one or more new facilities on the district’s West Sherman property — the district heard people’s opinion that the money would be better spent taking care of existing facilities.

The 2016 proposal would also pay for the technology to go with the upgraded schools, and that’s a fortunate change from the last time voters passed a capital bond — back when capital requests were limited to brick and mortar and could not be used for technology and other instructional tools.

The largest single improvement would be replacing May Street School, rather than building elsewhere and repurposing the building or selling the property. This meets a desire the community strongly expressed – keeping schools in neighborhoods.

The new proposal brings aged buildings up to speed, from new computers and science equipment at Wy’east Middle School to better and safer hardware on doorways at all schools.

Each building will receive some improvements, from playground improvements at Parkdale to interior revisions that will improve safety and make the buildings more accessible to the public. The bond will help Cascade Locks, the district’s western-most facility, as it transitions to becoming more of a community school, with health facilities, community library, and preschool programs either expanding or coming on board.

With a 15-year-old bond measure about to be retired, the new bond would involve the same rate, meaning that this 20-year commitment, while longer, would cost taxpayers no more each year than they are now paying. (A 2008 capital bond, which paid for Hood River Valley High School expansion, among other improvements, has another seven years to go.)

It helps to look back at what that earlier bonds paid for — projects such as classrooms and a computer lab at May Street, classrooms and a beautiful cafeteria at Hood River Middle School, a music room at Cascade Locks, a cafeteria at Mid Valley, a science wing at HRVHS, a performing arts center at Wy’east, and a library at Parkdale.

A telling fact is that the district’s buildings, some of them architectural treasures and all of them well-cared for, average 78 years. Their roofs, walls and systems are aging and definitely in need of replacement — the main examples being the three boilers, each 100 years old, fueling Parkdale, May Street and Hood River Middle Schools. (The HRMS boiler is already “history,” having broken down last spring and replaced in 2015 with a temporary boiler that the district is having to pay for out of the general fund.)

Our schools are vital assets as places of learning and as community spaces, and must be preserved. The bond proposal will go a long way, at no extra cost, to ensure the necessary care of the buildings and their increased capacity for the enrollment increases that are sure to come.